Hello! First time hot tub owner and desperately hoping to find an answer to this issue. Have had our Bullfrog A8 for about 3 weeks now and have been using it almost every night since. It came equipped with the inline cartridge Frog @ ease system which was sold to us a a more 'efficient' way to manage chlorine maintenance.
I ended up purchasing a Taylor test kit at the advice of several posts on this website and its consistently showing FC levels of <1 and a Combined/Total Chlorine level of 10+. Took a water sample in to the dealer and they confirmed that my FC is 0.3 and my CC is ~11. Based on where you get your info from this is either normal expected behavior from the Frog @ ease system or serious cause for concern. I've been shocking the water each week with with the SpaGuard Spa Shock-Oxidizer (non Enhanced). I feel like i'm getting mixed messages from the Bullfrog dealer vs what I'm reading on online hot tub forums. One person told me i should be adding extra dichlor after each use because of the low FC levels. Others have said not to add extra dichlor after each use because the @ ease system will automatically regulate. Honestly wondering if it's just easier to ditch the Frog system altogether at this point and adopt the dichlor/bleach routine.
Went in to the Bullfrog dealer today and talked with a sales rep and told him my FC level was .3 and he advised that we start using Enhanced Shock instead of the MPS shock. I asked if he was concerned about this raising CYA levels and he didn't seem to think it would be a problem. He said that the Frog ease system was really only designed for moderate hot tub use (2-3 times per week) and not for daily use as the Smartchlor cartridges wont be able to sufficiently keep up.
At this point i'm feeling a bit frustrated by the conflicting info I've been getting. Our other water levels (PH/TA/CH) are within normal ranges and the water itself is visibly clear and not cloudy. Can anyone in a similar situation share their water maintenance routine? Would greatly appreciate any advice or tips. Thank you in advance!
I use the Frog @ease system with my hot tub which I’ve had for 3 years. It was frustrating at first because my dealer that sold me various shock treatments to use with it every time after using tub, then next time I went to them, they said oh no, just once a week, then I’d read other things. I used different test kits, tried bromine,etc. I still had problems with skin rashes, etc. Finally I said forget everything I’ve been told and went to Frog’s website, read/watched their recommendations directly, and I follow it exactly, and love it. Works great. I do almost nothing and my tub is always perfectly clear and I use it almost daily. The system is more expensive … you could do things cheaper … but I have the inline version built into my tub and I use it and have no issues. And if I go out of town for a week I don’t worry about it.
I live in the Portland, OR metro area, so when I fill my tub I have to add some calcium hardener given our soft water, although Utah water is quite hard (used to live there), so you likely don’t have to do that. Then I toss in a jump start packet, put in the mineral cartridge and the smartchlor cartridge in and forget it. I test my water maybe once a week using frog test strips as other test strips don’t work right with frog system (they always say to add more chlorine). I add a little PH/alkalinity increaser every now and then as needed if they start to dip. I use a Frog Maintain shock packet once a month and change the smartchlor cartridge about every 3-4 weeks (450 gallon hot tub with smartchlor cartridge set on 3), but otherwise I do nothing.
I have very sensitive skin so I find that after about 6 months I usually have to swap the water or I start get itchy, although no one else in my family or guests ever seem to have issues. The mineral cartridges i swap after 4 months as they recommend. My hot tub also has a simple ozone generator in it, so between the ozone, the frog minerals and smartchlor it works fine. I’m a novice and was frustrated for the first year trying to figure things out because everyone said this and that and I tried learning all the technical details. But ultimately I threw it all out and only use frog products for everything but ph/alklinity adjustments.
So if you want to use frog products, they do work if you don’t mix in with other stuff based on my experience, but it is more expensive than other methods. But I just got too frustrated trying to get other things to work and not get itchy skin (I think my skin issues are caused by cyanuric acid which builds up in hot tubs using normal chlorine and shock treatments, but from what I’ve read from Frog, their products work in a way that you don’t get as much of this build up. I don’t know if that’s correct, but I don’t have itchy skin when I stick to their products).
