Aqua Smarte Mineral System

The Aqua Smarte Mineral System is not recommended.

The Aqua Smarte, Pool Frog, N2, and other mineral-based low chlorine systems aren't what they're advertised to be. Mineral-based low chlorine systems rely on the addition of silver and copper as algaecides because the free chlorine level isn't high enough to keep the algae at bay. The bacpac's contain nothing but trichlor tabs, which over time will result in your pool having too much stabilizer aka cyanuric acid.

An overstabilized pool requires much higher free chlorine levels to maintain the proper amount of free chlorine to sanitize your water, levels which the mineral systems aren't designed to produce, so you're constantly underchlorinating your pool. When you initially start, everything looks great because your stabilizer levels are fairly low.

The problems usually don't crop up until after a couple of years, and then you'll end up fighting your pool instead of enjoying it. It took about three years for my pool. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the copper you're adding to your water can stain your liner and turn blonde hair green, under the right conditions.

The short answer is that the Aqua Smarte is designed to trickle in chlorine slowly, so if it dropped to zero it cannot possibly catch back up.

The longer answer is that Aqua Smarte is an awful device. The "minerals" in it are just some extremely overpriced silver and the canisters are equally overpriced trichlor tablets.

You don't want to get too much silver in your water as it can stain, and trichlor allows CYA to build up which reduces the effectiveness of chlorine and forces you to either drain water or buy other costly products to keep algae at bay.

Their claim of using less chlorine is not only bogus, but relies on the incorrect assumption that less chlorine leads to a better swimming experience. It doesn't and the worst pools you have ever experienced probably had the least chlorine in them.

That's why you need to read the ABCs of Pool Water Chemistry, there is a lot of really bad sales literature being passed off as factual data in this industry and we are all susceptible to falling for it if we don't know otherwise.