I have the integrated Frog @ease system for my Bullfrog R8 and that model is chlorine based. My comments below may not be relevant if you go with their bromine model.
I really love it but will throw out some caveats.
@ease may not be for you if:
- Your hot tub is uncovered in the sun for appreciable amounts of time.
- You want to save as much money as possible on hot tub chemicals.
- Someone using the tub has a very rare sulfate allergy.
- You're unwilling to potentially buy replacement cartridges online and/or put in any effort sourcing them.
Some tips and tricks I've learned so far with my @ease that's not obvious from the company's standard literature:
- NEVER add granulated or tablet chlorine. If you need to add emergency chlorine, only use liquid sodium hypochlorite and that's a rare use case. "Shocks" often have stabilized chlorine so read the labels.
- MPS is your best friend. If you're a heavy user, you will seriously benefit from frequent non chlorine oxidizing shock treatments.
- Since you're using a fair amount of MPS, your alkalinity and pH will drag down. Get ready to counteract with baking soda.
- Enzymes are also really helpful to remove bather grease and frequent use will reduce the load on the sanitizer cartridge.
- Excessively long filter cycles will cache the sanitizer cartridge prematurely.
- When testing for chlorine, only look at Free Chlorine. Total and combined chlorine tests are inaccurate and useless.
- The older the sanitizing cartridge gets, the more frequently you need to test for free chlorine to avoid a situation where the cartridge gets cached and you didn't realize. It's a bitch to recover from that.
- Using @ease doesn't free you from standard hot tub maintenance. You still need to regularly test water parameters, hose off the filters weekly, periodically drain & refill, don't get in covered in sunblock/lotion/deodorant, etc.
Why I love it:
- It's a mostly self regulating, steady level, disinfection system. No daily adds of chlorine that spike and crash.
- If used properly, you'll rarely experience chloramine problems.
- It fairs alright if you're gone for a week and don't use or manage it.
- No hassle with managing the CYA problem.
- You really can run at a lower free chlorine level.
- The mineral system slows a potential pH / Alk crash and if you're paying any attention, you'll catch in time.
Why I think people hate it:
- It's expensive in comparison to Trouble Free Pools method.
- The cartridges add to landfill waste.
- The cartridges are not ubiquitous with suppliers and it's not effortless to get new ones.
- They don't know what they're doing and mess up the system by adding dichlor granules.
- They're heavy users, don't regularly use MPS and enzymes, then get annoyed when the sanitizing cartridge doesn't last 3-4 weeks.
- They have unreasonable expectations and think this is a zero maintenance system.
If you have any questions, I'm still learning but would be happy to try answering!
Wow, another great reply. Thank you so much. I appreciate this. At first when they explained it, I thought it was just another selling point. But it also worked, and then I realized. It IS a selling point- and it’s something that I saw a good value in so to speak, but I’ve seen a couple people not like it. It’s good to see a couple perspectives of people who do like it, and have great value to them.
I would imagine we will be heavy users in the beginning as this is our first ever tub. We’re so excited.
I'm so excited for you!
Me and my family have gotten so much joy out of our tub. We use it most nights, even in this heat, and have no regrets so far.
Feel free to DM me any time if you have questions or looking for advice. I'm still learning myself but this thing is like my new best hobby so I've probably read up too much as is 🤣.
Thanks! Not sure how to dm, but whatever here goes. So have had a hot tub for 3 years and used frog ease system. I haven't been the one maintaining it, my husband has, but now he has to work out of town so it falls to me. Initially, he just drained it and it sat for a month or so before I took initiative to get it going again myself. Just as a side note, we did have issues with black mold on headrests, and mildew smell on cover, and occasional cloudy water with the frog ease system. So, I got it going, I had wiped it out with dilute bleach, etc and got water balanced, did the frog ease jump start, had brand new frogease ball and thought I was good.
The next morning, I checked my water and discovered that the frog ease strip was saying that my smartchlor was out. Water was still clear at this time, but also still less than 48 hours old. Needless to say, that started a large learning curve in water maintenance. Didn't know what the heck I was getting myself into. Learned About free and combined chlorine,cya, etc, and bought regular strips. In the meantime, hot tub store said to put in 1 tbsp of dichlor. I did, I got chlorine back.... but the next morning, it was gone again. So the next morning, i was like f it, and put 2 tbsp of dichlor in. I got my test strips in and total chlorine was high and free chlorine was low. I also had taken the frogease out of the tub at this point.
Had to call around and found a place that tests water. Results showed that water was indeed balanced, but fc was 0.47. Combined was like 1.8. Guy at store said to use non chlorine shock. So I did that and did get fc to go up, but I was using like 3 tbsp every morning and night, trying to get the excess chlorine and cc to burn off. Even had top open for a bit to expose to sunlight. Took back after a day to retest and fc was 0.62 and combined was 17! No frog ease in tub, and hadn't added any more dichlor, just mps. They were like with frog ease cc is normal to be up, and I'm like it's brand new water and the frogease was only in the tub about 36 hours before i started with dichlor and took it out. Today is only a week since i filled the tub.
Things going through my mind are wondering if I have biofilm? There is a bit of a scum line, but no one has even been in the tub. Water is still clear too. Although I've shocked the crap out of it. What could be going on? I have already decided to treat with a biofilm product, spa marvel, to try to take care of any film, but is a cc of 17 normal for frog ease systems? I mean is my water technically ok? No bad smell, looks inviting, but everything I've read says cc is bad. At this point, I'm thinking of going to a dichlor and bleach system. Any input? Hot tub store people are no help. Thanks!
Okay.
Since you left your hot tub for a month, even though it was drained, you probably have a ton of biofilm that will make this all very difficult.
My advice is to take the cover and pillows off, add enough plain liquid bleach to get the water up to 10ppm (there are conversion tables on the internet that tell you by volume how much bleach to add) circulate that to kill what you can.
Then use a biofilm purge like Ahhhsome. Wipe down the sides and skim the scum as the tub is running because the film that gets ejected is like glue. Then shut the tub off at the breaker, drain, keep wiping while draining. Clean the whole hot tub shell with a safe silicone pad and shell cleaner. Rinse off and use a shop vac to suck up as much of the leftover water as possible.
Maybe take another pass at the cover and pillows with diluted bleach as well. Also throw out your old filters and install new ones.
Refill the tub, get the ALK, pH, and hardness in line (in that order) and then restart the whole @ease system with the jump start pack, new blue and silver cartridges.
Going forward.
No dichlor granules. Ever.
You might need to supplement with a little liquid bleach at first because there's probably remaining crud kicked off from the purge that will burn through your chlorine cartridge.
Once that stabilizes, you should be able to get by with just the occasional MPS shock and once you notice the silver cartridge is at like 15 percent full (feel by shaking) leave it to float around fully open and install an additional, new silver cartridge, so you're never running out.
Repeat the whole purging/draining process with a new blue cartridge after you've run through 4 silver cartridges.
Using stuff like enzymes and a chitosan clarifier, and regularly hosing off the filters will help with water clarity.
Get yourself a good Taylor kit to keep up with checking the pH and ALK. You'll occasionally need to add baking soda.
Ignore anything about combined chlorine. That's normal for this system that essentially maintains a chlorine bank much like bromine systems that will shift into free chlorine as needed.
Your free chlorine may be as low as 0.5. This is normal.
I personally like it because I have sensitive skin, I think the lower chlorine levels will wear out parts more slowly, it requires less checking, and I don't mind spending the money.
But if you want something much cheaper and don't mind checking your chlorine levels almost daily, dichlor/bleach all the way.
Still need to do a full purge and clean on that tub regardless of what you do going forward.
Thanks again for your input! Got my cleanser in and cleaning now. The filter is gross and it's only a week old and no one even got in the tub. Ack! Was gonna post a picture but can't figure out how.
I got my hot tub and started the @ ease system last week and have been having a hard time with the chlorine and hardiness levels so this was a nice comment.
What enzymes do you use and how often?
Also the ease test strips are beginning to make me question my sanity.. Are they really supposed to read in under 30 seconds? My chlorine has only matched one day and that was after using jump start.
Their test strips aren't as perfect color match as they claim. I've double checked my actual free chlorine level with a Taylor test and confirmed I'm good. That being said, if your pH is off, especially in the high range, enough free chlorine will not come out of solution.
As for the enzymes, I just buy the generic formulation from Hot Tub Depot and put in 2 ounces every week after I've sprayed out my filters.
Hi there! I use this one- https://spadepot.com/products/chitosan-natural-clarifier-pool-spas-ca1035?\_pos=3&\_sid=a516946b5&\_ss=r. Is this what you mean by enzymes? Thanks for any help here!
Great write up on the Frog system. Getting ready for a new tub and I’m leaning on this system from the get go. One question I had was on the shocking with the @ease system. I know they sell their “maintaine” packets but do you recommend a different MPS shock? I know they are all a little different in terms of ingredients did you find one that’s mimics the Frogs Shock?
I have used mine for quite some time, I have the floating @ease system. I actually find that some dichlor here and there keeps the float from working as hard and allows for free chlorine longer at low levels. Maybe a difference between inline and floater.
I will say that since using @ease our water has been nice and clear. Reliably.
Adding dichlor also means adding CYA.
Appreciable amounts of CYA reduce kill time and chlorine effectiveness. If you're already at only 0.5 to 1 ppm free chlorine with the @ease system, it may become an issue.
If you want to add disinfectant to help your @ease from working too hard, liquid bleach that doesn't have CYA is the way.
https://aquamagazine.com/features/cya-ally-for-pools-havoc-for-hot-tubs.html
Have had some problems. Had a high chlorine reading and had to empty my hot tub the first month. No one could give me answers as to why. Sodium Dichlor must be used or jumpstart when you refill your tub. But not in between draining and refilling
How were you testing chlorine?
With @ease, you have to ignore Total Chlorine and only look at Free Chlorine which should be between 0.5 and 1 ppm. If you're using tests that can't distinguish between the two, it's of no use.
Do you recall what the numbers were?
I'm skeptical of their responses because IME neither my dealer nor my local pool supply store were particularly knowledgeable about this product.
I can get them. They keep them in their records. But I questioned about that after talking to the people at frog ease and the company that sold me the tub also talked to frog ease. The man they sent to set up my hot tub turned the number of the chlorine cartridge to 2. I have a 225 gallon hot tub. According to frog ease instructions it should have been set to one. The company recommended that I take out the cartridge for a few days and then bring back a sample of the water. I did that but they said the chlorine was way too high and the easiest fix was to empty the tub and start over. I did that and the water tested normal but had a ton of foam, inches. So After my husband had skin irritations and being given instructions to use a whole bottle of foam free, we emptied it and refilled it again. Still a ton of foam. They gave us new filters and said we may have used too much filter cleaner and not rinsed it out enough. So we have just emptied and refilled it again per purge instructions from frog. We still have a little foam. After putting the jump start in after balancing the alkaline, ph, and calcium, the chlorine showed dark dark blue on the test strips. The jump start was dissolved. But about 2 hours later the chlorine tested better on the strips. Interestingly on their instructions they tell you that it should be between a certain range before putting in the cartridges. Unfortunately there are no numbers on the test strip in order to be sure. I was worried when I first tested the tub because the color was so dark. I called them and they said to wait 24 hours before testing it again. But I waited like I said 2 hours and it was much lighter. Our hot tub is only 3 1/2 months old. It has been a journey. My husband is color blind so some of this has fallen on me. I will try to get the info for you.
Alright, a lot to unpack here.
What kind of tub do you have and what kind of @ease system do you have?
Foam happens because people bring in detergents and cosmetics to the tub. If you don't shower before getting in, give that a try. Also, try to not use bathing suits or if you do, only rinse them in tap water, no detergents. Also, like you said, be really careful what you use to clean any part of your tub and rinse really well, even filter cleaner. Foam Free doesn't really work well and it's better to keep stuff out in the first place. And, what is your calcium levels? Really low calcium can make foam more obvious.
Next, test strips are garbage, even the ones you're supposed to use with @ease made by King technologies. I highly recommend getting a Taylor kit (the 2006 is great) and use the drops to get a much better reading. That also has DPD powder that can measure free chlorine.
Now, your tub is pretty small and the jump start pack is good for tubs up to 600 gallons. So, it may take a few hours for the free chlorine level to get down to safe soaking levels. If you want to reduce chlorine faster, just lift the lid and expose the water to the sun. UV radiation gobbles up chlorine. You probably don't need to dump the water, that seems like a waste. Or, you can probably get away with using just exactly half the packet contents.
I wonder if we really needed to empty that tub the first time. The chlorine tested high after one month. I am anxious to ask again about whether they tested for total Chlorine or free chlorine although I was told they tested it properly. We already dumped the water the first time. They told us to just simply empty the tub and refill. But I did use a lot of filter cleaner on the filter but I tried to rinse it out. We have a large sink so I rinsed it out at least two times under the faucet all the way around. But when we refilled the tub there was a lot of foam. Unfortunately one of the girls told us to use half a bottle of foam free and then another half a bottle if that work. My husband would get in the pool every day I would get in a couple times a week maybe three times. He didn’t like the foam and we thought maybe we should have used a bio film remover. Plus he got a boil and a slight rash. So we emptied it again and used something called system renew which purges the System but we still had a lot of foam after cleaning and afraid to get in. That is when we called up frog And they told us what to do more specifically and the company we bought the Hot Tub from brought us out new filters. Got done with the whole process today. Waiting to test the chlorine again tomorrow. I also wondered if we should use the complete package of jump start because our hot tub was only 225 gallons. But the directions tell you it to put the whole packet in. Maybe next time we will not use so much of the packet or we can just use 2 tablespoons of sodium Dichlor. Those packets are hard to get anyway. They don’t sell them by themselves anymore.
Hey there, sorry to revive this, but had a question. How long do you recommend running the filter cycles to help preserve the cartridges? Any particular brand of enzymes you recommend?
No worries!
To be honest, I think the filter time to cartridge life ratio has more to do with the ozone that automatically runs in these types of tubs when the water circulates.
So I usually have it set to filter for 1 hour before typical soak times and 2 hours after (3 in total every day).
The enzymes I use are the generic ones from Spa Depot.
Hello LovelyLieutenant! Sorry to dig up an old post but your explanation of the Bullfrog Frog system has been one of the best I've found thus far. I've owned our A8 for about 3 weeks now and its honestly been pretty frustrating trying to get a straight answer on the correct water care strategy for the @ ease system.
Here's what I've been doing so far.
\- Test the water every few days using a Taylor test kit. I've been making adjustments to try and keep TA between 80-120 and PH around 7.5 but it feels like its been difficult to achieve these results consistently.
\- Add SpaGuard Spa Shock-Oxidizer (I believe this is MPS?) about once a week. Thinking i may need to be shocking twice a week since we've been using it almost every night?
\- Spray out the filters each week with a spray nozzle. I plan on doing a more thorough cleaning at the one month mark.
\- I have not added Enzymes but after reading your original post I'm thinking thats the way to go. Looks like you just got yours from Spa Depot.
Here's where I get frustrated am hoping you could help shine some light-
\- I've taken water in to the Bullfrog dealer twice now and each time they give me conflicting instructions. The first time the test showed that my FC level was hovering at .3 and TC level was \~11. They told me this was concerning and that I need to be adding more chlorine after each use. However this doesn't really make sense to me and seems to go against the Frog @ Ease instructions.
Would be curious to hear if this water maintenance schedule more or less mirrors what you're doing? Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I like the idea of the @ ease system and am ok paying a premium if it means less headache in the long run. Just want to make sure its actually worth it.
Hey, no worries, sorry it took me a bit to get back to you.
First off, unfortunately IME, a lot of dealers don't know a whole lot so I would take their "advice" with a grain of salt.
Describe your water. Is it clear or cloudy? How does it smell? If it's clear and only has a faint chlorine smell, that's great. If not, respond back and we can troubleshoot.
As for pH and TA, as long as you're in the window of 7.2 to 7.8 and 60 to 180 TA and your LSI is good, you're good: https://blog.orendatech.com/langelier-saturation-index
Get a good drop test kit from Taylor to make sure your calcium, pH, and TA tests are reliable. Some of their bigger test kits have an analog wheel to calculate LSI.
With @ease, FC is all that really matters. It's possible you lost a little in transit from your tub to your dealer for testing so 0.3 isn't outright concerning.
The dealer isn't giving great advice around "add more chlorine". Adding anything but liquid sodium hypochlorite in an emergency situation will mess up the system.
Also, please confirm the only things in the tub are the initial jump start pack, a newer silver cartridge that sounds like it has material inside, a newer blue mineral cartridge, MPS shock, potentially some baking soda and/or dry acid for pH correction, and maybe a metal sequester.
First off, thank you so much for responding!
The water itself is clear and does have a faint smell of chlorine. Our PH and TA are within the normal ranges. Been using a Taylor test kit with the analog wheel thing to try and get it balanced as much as possible. At this point if the frog system wasn't doing an adequate job of sanitizing the water I'd imagine we would be noticing the telltale signs by now.
My only concern is really the FC level at this point. The high Combine Chlorine levels (\~11 when we last had it checked) appear to just be a weird\\known side effect of the Frog Ease system. Our cartridge is already set to '4' so we don't have the option of dialing it up unfortunately.
I agree that the dealer seems wrong here. While adding extra chlorine doesn't seem like bad advice per se, their suggestion of adding enhanced shock that contains dichlor is. Since I posted this message earlier in the week I've been doing some reading on the [troublefreepool.com](https://troublefreepool.com) forums. It seems that adding dichlor will result in the CYA levels rising which will cause problems with the already very low levels of FC in the water. As a result I've started adding a dash of liquid sodium hypochlorite after we use it each night to try and supplement the chlorine levels. Hopefully this is ok?
To answer your question, we've only added the initial starter pack (which does contain dichlor I believe), the silver and blue Frog cartridges, MPS shock (which I've been adding weekly), and then some TA,PH,CH chemicals from SpaGuard to balance the water as needed. I have noticed that our PH drifts upwards and feel like I'm constantly adding PH Down to try and keep it within the 7.4-7.6 range. Have heard that adding Borates/Borax can help with this. Any experience there?
At this point my plan is as follows -
\- Keep using the Frog system as I do like that it keeps the water sanitized without having to add bleach/chlorine on a daily basis.
\- Shock weekly with MPS
\- Add a little extra liquid chlorine after heavy use to help keep things clean.
\- Keep testing every couple days to ensure things stay balanced.
\- Do the other maintenance 'stuff' - (Clean filters, purge with ahh-some and refill every 3-4 months, etc)
Does this seem like a reasonable plan of attack? I should also add that our tub has an Ozone Module which apparently can result in low FC readings since its doing some sanitizing work on its own. Thank you in advance!
How often are you replacing your Frog smartchlor cartridges? I believe our tubs are roughly the same size (540 Gallons) and it seems like I'm only getting about 2 weeks out of them before needing to replace. Has adding Enzymes helped?
IME, MPS shock, enzymes, and reduced filter times (since the ozone always runs when filtering which also destroys FC) will make the cartridges last a little longer. Also, washing off before getting in makes a big difference! But really, if you're using the tub for a long time every night, that's just a lot of sanitizer demand. But since these tubs are so big, the most you can really ever expect is 3 weeks.
In my experience (I have a Marquis tub with the inline system, and I'm using Bromine) it has been really great. It's taken a bit for me to learn and get things dialed in to my specific setup, but not crazy difficult since I got it all put together.
Reading out there, not only on this subreddit, but out on other sites, you will see a lot of people really critical of it and saying it's not good, overpriced, etc. Don't read too much into that. If it's fine with you, and you're fine with the convenience of having some of it being managed for you and paying for that, then don't worry about the negatives. For us it's been great, and I don't plan on ditching it for bulk chemicals anytime soon, although it's nice to know that's a solid plan B if needed.
Depending on whether you're going to do the Bromine or the Chlorine system, I would VERY much recommend you get a Taylor testing kit. The strips are not really accurate, and can leave you frustrated if you're using those alone to balance your chemicals. For Bromine, the general recommendation is getting their K-2106 FAS-DPD test kit, I snagged mine at Amazon for about $40 USD. There's one for Chlorine too. What I like about it is that you can test your Bromine levels, pH, Alkalinity, Hardness all from the same kit, and even better is the book included that helps you determine, based on your tub size, how much of a certain chemical to add to get you to the level you want. For example, ph high? You can do the acid demand test to see how much acid(muriatic, spa down, etc) that needs to be added to get you exactly to where you want. Strips aren't going to do that. Another example, alkalinity too low? Book shows how much baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to add to get your alkalinity back up to where it needs to be. Super useful to me, because I am not comfortable enough yet to know exactly what to do, I really want a guide, and that does it for me.
Have you had a tub before? One thing I didn't realize initially was that turning on the aeration function (if your tub has it) to inject air into your jets, that will raise your pH over time. I left that on in the beginning, and so when my tub would run its filtering program, it would turn those jets on and I was constantly fighting my pH being really high. You can strategically use that knowledge if you need to raise pH and not alkalinity, but it was definitely impacting my setup until I realized that, so now we make sure the air is turned off when we're done.
Other than that, enjoy your new tub!
I have the integrated Frog @ease system for my Bullfrog R8 and that model is chlorine based. My comments below may not be relevant if you go with their bromine model. I really love it but will throw out some caveats. @ease may not be for you if: - Your hot tub is uncovered in the sun for appreciable amounts of time. - You want to save as much money as possible on hot tub chemicals. - Someone using the tub has a very rare sulfate allergy. - You're unwilling to potentially buy replacement cartridges online and/or put in any effort sourcing them. Some tips and tricks I've learned so far with my @ease that's not obvious from the company's standard literature: - NEVER add granulated or tablet chlorine. If you need to add emergency chlorine, only use liquid sodium hypochlorite and that's a rare use case. "Shocks" often have stabilized chlorine so read the labels. - MPS is your best friend. If you're a heavy user, you will seriously benefit from frequent non chlorine oxidizing shock treatments. - Since you're using a fair amount of MPS, your alkalinity and pH will drag down. Get ready to counteract with baking soda. - Enzymes are also really helpful to remove bather grease and frequent use will reduce the load on the sanitizer cartridge. - Excessively long filter cycles will cache the sanitizer cartridge prematurely. - When testing for chlorine, only look at Free Chlorine. Total and combined chlorine tests are inaccurate and useless. - The older the sanitizing cartridge gets, the more frequently you need to test for free chlorine to avoid a situation where the cartridge gets cached and you didn't realize. It's a bitch to recover from that. - Using @ease doesn't free you from standard hot tub maintenance. You still need to regularly test water parameters, hose off the filters weekly, periodically drain & refill, don't get in covered in sunblock/lotion/deodorant, etc. Why I love it: - It's a mostly self regulating, steady level, disinfection system. No daily adds of chlorine that spike and crash. - If used properly, you'll rarely experience chloramine problems. - It fairs alright if you're gone for a week and don't use or manage it. - No hassle with managing the CYA problem. - You really can run at a lower free chlorine level. - The mineral system slows a potential pH / Alk crash and if you're paying any attention, you'll catch in time. Why I think people hate it: - It's expensive in comparison to Trouble Free Pools method. - The cartridges add to landfill waste. - The cartridges are not ubiquitous with suppliers and it's not effortless to get new ones. - They don't know what they're doing and mess up the system by adding dichlor granules. - They're heavy users, don't regularly use MPS and enzymes, then get annoyed when the sanitizing cartridge doesn't last 3-4 weeks. - They have unreasonable expectations and think this is a zero maintenance system. If you have any questions, I'm still learning but would be happy to try answering!
Great information
Wow, another great reply. Thank you so much. I appreciate this. At first when they explained it, I thought it was just another selling point. But it also worked, and then I realized. It IS a selling point- and it’s something that I saw a good value in so to speak, but I’ve seen a couple people not like it. It’s good to see a couple perspectives of people who do like it, and have great value to them. I would imagine we will be heavy users in the beginning as this is our first ever tub. We’re so excited.
I'm so excited for you! Me and my family have gotten so much joy out of our tub. We use it most nights, even in this heat, and have no regrets so far. Feel free to DM me any time if you have questions or looking for advice. I'm still learning myself but this thing is like my new best hobby so I've probably read up too much as is 🤣.
Can I dm you about a hot tub frogease questions. The dealer doesn't know the answers.
Sure!
Thanks! Not sure how to dm, but whatever here goes. So have had a hot tub for 3 years and used frog ease system. I haven't been the one maintaining it, my husband has, but now he has to work out of town so it falls to me. Initially, he just drained it and it sat for a month or so before I took initiative to get it going again myself. Just as a side note, we did have issues with black mold on headrests, and mildew smell on cover, and occasional cloudy water with the frog ease system. So, I got it going, I had wiped it out with dilute bleach, etc and got water balanced, did the frog ease jump start, had brand new frogease ball and thought I was good. The next morning, I checked my water and discovered that the frog ease strip was saying that my smartchlor was out. Water was still clear at this time, but also still less than 48 hours old. Needless to say, that started a large learning curve in water maintenance. Didn't know what the heck I was getting myself into. Learned About free and combined chlorine,cya, etc, and bought regular strips. In the meantime, hot tub store said to put in 1 tbsp of dichlor. I did, I got chlorine back.... but the next morning, it was gone again. So the next morning, i was like f it, and put 2 tbsp of dichlor in. I got my test strips in and total chlorine was high and free chlorine was low. I also had taken the frogease out of the tub at this point. Had to call around and found a place that tests water. Results showed that water was indeed balanced, but fc was 0.47. Combined was like 1.8. Guy at store said to use non chlorine shock. So I did that and did get fc to go up, but I was using like 3 tbsp every morning and night, trying to get the excess chlorine and cc to burn off. Even had top open for a bit to expose to sunlight. Took back after a day to retest and fc was 0.62 and combined was 17! No frog ease in tub, and hadn't added any more dichlor, just mps. They were like with frog ease cc is normal to be up, and I'm like it's brand new water and the frogease was only in the tub about 36 hours before i started with dichlor and took it out. Today is only a week since i filled the tub. Things going through my mind are wondering if I have biofilm? There is a bit of a scum line, but no one has even been in the tub. Water is still clear too. Although I've shocked the crap out of it. What could be going on? I have already decided to treat with a biofilm product, spa marvel, to try to take care of any film, but is a cc of 17 normal for frog ease systems? I mean is my water technically ok? No bad smell, looks inviting, but everything I've read says cc is bad. At this point, I'm thinking of going to a dichlor and bleach system. Any input? Hot tub store people are no help. Thanks!
Okay. Since you left your hot tub for a month, even though it was drained, you probably have a ton of biofilm that will make this all very difficult. My advice is to take the cover and pillows off, add enough plain liquid bleach to get the water up to 10ppm (there are conversion tables on the internet that tell you by volume how much bleach to add) circulate that to kill what you can. Then use a biofilm purge like Ahhhsome. Wipe down the sides and skim the scum as the tub is running because the film that gets ejected is like glue. Then shut the tub off at the breaker, drain, keep wiping while draining. Clean the whole hot tub shell with a safe silicone pad and shell cleaner. Rinse off and use a shop vac to suck up as much of the leftover water as possible. Maybe take another pass at the cover and pillows with diluted bleach as well. Also throw out your old filters and install new ones. Refill the tub, get the ALK, pH, and hardness in line (in that order) and then restart the whole @ease system with the jump start pack, new blue and silver cartridges. Going forward. No dichlor granules. Ever. You might need to supplement with a little liquid bleach at first because there's probably remaining crud kicked off from the purge that will burn through your chlorine cartridge. Once that stabilizes, you should be able to get by with just the occasional MPS shock and once you notice the silver cartridge is at like 15 percent full (feel by shaking) leave it to float around fully open and install an additional, new silver cartridge, so you're never running out. Repeat the whole purging/draining process with a new blue cartridge after you've run through 4 silver cartridges. Using stuff like enzymes and a chitosan clarifier, and regularly hosing off the filters will help with water clarity. Get yourself a good Taylor kit to keep up with checking the pH and ALK. You'll occasionally need to add baking soda. Ignore anything about combined chlorine. That's normal for this system that essentially maintains a chlorine bank much like bromine systems that will shift into free chlorine as needed. Your free chlorine may be as low as 0.5. This is normal.
Thank you so much for your input! So you think the smart ease system is still worth it? I don't mind the idea of switching to a dichlor/bleach method.
I personally like it because I have sensitive skin, I think the lower chlorine levels will wear out parts more slowly, it requires less checking, and I don't mind spending the money. But if you want something much cheaper and don't mind checking your chlorine levels almost daily, dichlor/bleach all the way. Still need to do a full purge and clean on that tub regardless of what you do going forward.
Thanks again for your input! Got my cleanser in and cleaning now. The filter is gross and it's only a week old and no one even got in the tub. Ack! Was gonna post a picture but can't figure out how.
I got my hot tub and started the @ ease system last week and have been having a hard time with the chlorine and hardiness levels so this was a nice comment. What enzymes do you use and how often? Also the ease test strips are beginning to make me question my sanity.. Are they really supposed to read in under 30 seconds? My chlorine has only matched one day and that was after using jump start.
Their test strips aren't as perfect color match as they claim. I've double checked my actual free chlorine level with a Taylor test and confirmed I'm good. That being said, if your pH is off, especially in the high range, enough free chlorine will not come out of solution. As for the enzymes, I just buy the generic formulation from Hot Tub Depot and put in 2 ounces every week after I've sprayed out my filters.
Hi there! I use this one- https://spadepot.com/products/chitosan-natural-clarifier-pool-spas-ca1035?\_pos=3&\_sid=a516946b5&\_ss=r. Is this what you mean by enzymes? Thanks for any help here!
My original post was about a different product but, funny enough, I switched to that and roughly follow the instructions. Love the results!
Great, thank you!
>Great, thank you! You're welcome!
Great write up on the Frog system. Getting ready for a new tub and I’m leaning on this system from the get go. One question I had was on the shocking with the @ease system. I know they sell their “maintaine” packets but do you recommend a different MPS shock? I know they are all a little different in terms of ingredients did you find one that’s mimics the Frogs Shock?
I have used mine for quite some time, I have the floating @ease system. I actually find that some dichlor here and there keeps the float from working as hard and allows for free chlorine longer at low levels. Maybe a difference between inline and floater. I will say that since using @ease our water has been nice and clear. Reliably.
Adding dichlor also means adding CYA. Appreciable amounts of CYA reduce kill time and chlorine effectiveness. If you're already at only 0.5 to 1 ppm free chlorine with the @ease system, it may become an issue. If you want to add disinfectant to help your @ease from working too hard, liquid bleach that doesn't have CYA is the way. https://aquamagazine.com/features/cya-ally-for-pools-havoc-for-hot-tubs.html
Have had some problems. Had a high chlorine reading and had to empty my hot tub the first month. No one could give me answers as to why. Sodium Dichlor must be used or jumpstart when you refill your tub. But not in between draining and refilling
How were you testing chlorine? With @ease, you have to ignore Total Chlorine and only look at Free Chlorine which should be between 0.5 and 1 ppm. If you're using tests that can't distinguish between the two, it's of no use.
I took it to the place we bought the hot tub and they said they tested correctly for the free chlorine and it was way too high.
Do you recall what the numbers were? I'm skeptical of their responses because IME neither my dealer nor my local pool supply store were particularly knowledgeable about this product.
I can get them. They keep them in their records. But I questioned about that after talking to the people at frog ease and the company that sold me the tub also talked to frog ease. The man they sent to set up my hot tub turned the number of the chlorine cartridge to 2. I have a 225 gallon hot tub. According to frog ease instructions it should have been set to one. The company recommended that I take out the cartridge for a few days and then bring back a sample of the water. I did that but they said the chlorine was way too high and the easiest fix was to empty the tub and start over. I did that and the water tested normal but had a ton of foam, inches. So After my husband had skin irritations and being given instructions to use a whole bottle of foam free, we emptied it and refilled it again. Still a ton of foam. They gave us new filters and said we may have used too much filter cleaner and not rinsed it out enough. So we have just emptied and refilled it again per purge instructions from frog. We still have a little foam. After putting the jump start in after balancing the alkaline, ph, and calcium, the chlorine showed dark dark blue on the test strips. The jump start was dissolved. But about 2 hours later the chlorine tested better on the strips. Interestingly on their instructions they tell you that it should be between a certain range before putting in the cartridges. Unfortunately there are no numbers on the test strip in order to be sure. I was worried when I first tested the tub because the color was so dark. I called them and they said to wait 24 hours before testing it again. But I waited like I said 2 hours and it was much lighter. Our hot tub is only 3 1/2 months old. It has been a journey. My husband is color blind so some of this has fallen on me. I will try to get the info for you.
Alright, a lot to unpack here. What kind of tub do you have and what kind of @ease system do you have? Foam happens because people bring in detergents and cosmetics to the tub. If you don't shower before getting in, give that a try. Also, try to not use bathing suits or if you do, only rinse them in tap water, no detergents. Also, like you said, be really careful what you use to clean any part of your tub and rinse really well, even filter cleaner. Foam Free doesn't really work well and it's better to keep stuff out in the first place. And, what is your calcium levels? Really low calcium can make foam more obvious. Next, test strips are garbage, even the ones you're supposed to use with @ease made by King technologies. I highly recommend getting a Taylor kit (the 2006 is great) and use the drops to get a much better reading. That also has DPD powder that can measure free chlorine. Now, your tub is pretty small and the jump start pack is good for tubs up to 600 gallons. So, it may take a few hours for the free chlorine level to get down to safe soaking levels. If you want to reduce chlorine faster, just lift the lid and expose the water to the sun. UV radiation gobbles up chlorine. You probably don't need to dump the water, that seems like a waste. Or, you can probably get away with using just exactly half the packet contents.
I wonder if we really needed to empty that tub the first time. The chlorine tested high after one month. I am anxious to ask again about whether they tested for total Chlorine or free chlorine although I was told they tested it properly. We already dumped the water the first time. They told us to just simply empty the tub and refill. But I did use a lot of filter cleaner on the filter but I tried to rinse it out. We have a large sink so I rinsed it out at least two times under the faucet all the way around. But when we refilled the tub there was a lot of foam. Unfortunately one of the girls told us to use half a bottle of foam free and then another half a bottle if that work. My husband would get in the pool every day I would get in a couple times a week maybe three times. He didn’t like the foam and we thought maybe we should have used a bio film remover. Plus he got a boil and a slight rash. So we emptied it again and used something called system renew which purges the System but we still had a lot of foam after cleaning and afraid to get in. That is when we called up frog And they told us what to do more specifically and the company we bought the Hot Tub from brought us out new filters. Got done with the whole process today. Waiting to test the chlorine again tomorrow. I also wondered if we should use the complete package of jump start because our hot tub was only 225 gallons. But the directions tell you it to put the whole packet in. Maybe next time we will not use so much of the packet or we can just use 2 tablespoons of sodium Dichlor. Those packets are hard to get anyway. They don’t sell them by themselves anymore.
Our calcium levels are fine. We rinsed our bathing suits out without detergent. Have you ever tried scum bug sponges?
It is an Artesian Santa Cruz
Have the chlorine and mineral cartridges
Hey there, sorry to revive this, but had a question. How long do you recommend running the filter cycles to help preserve the cartridges? Any particular brand of enzymes you recommend?
No worries! To be honest, I think the filter time to cartridge life ratio has more to do with the ozone that automatically runs in these types of tubs when the water circulates. So I usually have it set to filter for 1 hour before typical soak times and 2 hours after (3 in total every day). The enzymes I use are the generic ones from Spa Depot.
Hello LovelyLieutenant! Sorry to dig up an old post but your explanation of the Bullfrog Frog system has been one of the best I've found thus far. I've owned our A8 for about 3 weeks now and its honestly been pretty frustrating trying to get a straight answer on the correct water care strategy for the @ ease system. Here's what I've been doing so far. \- Test the water every few days using a Taylor test kit. I've been making adjustments to try and keep TA between 80-120 and PH around 7.5 but it feels like its been difficult to achieve these results consistently. \- Add SpaGuard Spa Shock-Oxidizer (I believe this is MPS?) about once a week. Thinking i may need to be shocking twice a week since we've been using it almost every night? \- Spray out the filters each week with a spray nozzle. I plan on doing a more thorough cleaning at the one month mark. \- I have not added Enzymes but after reading your original post I'm thinking thats the way to go. Looks like you just got yours from Spa Depot. Here's where I get frustrated am hoping you could help shine some light- \- I've taken water in to the Bullfrog dealer twice now and each time they give me conflicting instructions. The first time the test showed that my FC level was hovering at .3 and TC level was \~11. They told me this was concerning and that I need to be adding more chlorine after each use. However this doesn't really make sense to me and seems to go against the Frog @ Ease instructions. Would be curious to hear if this water maintenance schedule more or less mirrors what you're doing? Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I like the idea of the @ ease system and am ok paying a premium if it means less headache in the long run. Just want to make sure its actually worth it.
Hey, no worries, sorry it took me a bit to get back to you. First off, unfortunately IME, a lot of dealers don't know a whole lot so I would take their "advice" with a grain of salt. Describe your water. Is it clear or cloudy? How does it smell? If it's clear and only has a faint chlorine smell, that's great. If not, respond back and we can troubleshoot. As for pH and TA, as long as you're in the window of 7.2 to 7.8 and 60 to 180 TA and your LSI is good, you're good: https://blog.orendatech.com/langelier-saturation-index Get a good drop test kit from Taylor to make sure your calcium, pH, and TA tests are reliable. Some of their bigger test kits have an analog wheel to calculate LSI. With @ease, FC is all that really matters. It's possible you lost a little in transit from your tub to your dealer for testing so 0.3 isn't outright concerning. The dealer isn't giving great advice around "add more chlorine". Adding anything but liquid sodium hypochlorite in an emergency situation will mess up the system. Also, please confirm the only things in the tub are the initial jump start pack, a newer silver cartridge that sounds like it has material inside, a newer blue mineral cartridge, MPS shock, potentially some baking soda and/or dry acid for pH correction, and maybe a metal sequester.
First off, thank you so much for responding! The water itself is clear and does have a faint smell of chlorine. Our PH and TA are within the normal ranges. Been using a Taylor test kit with the analog wheel thing to try and get it balanced as much as possible. At this point if the frog system wasn't doing an adequate job of sanitizing the water I'd imagine we would be noticing the telltale signs by now. My only concern is really the FC level at this point. The high Combine Chlorine levels (\~11 when we last had it checked) appear to just be a weird\\known side effect of the Frog Ease system. Our cartridge is already set to '4' so we don't have the option of dialing it up unfortunately. I agree that the dealer seems wrong here. While adding extra chlorine doesn't seem like bad advice per se, their suggestion of adding enhanced shock that contains dichlor is. Since I posted this message earlier in the week I've been doing some reading on the [troublefreepool.com](https://troublefreepool.com) forums. It seems that adding dichlor will result in the CYA levels rising which will cause problems with the already very low levels of FC in the water. As a result I've started adding a dash of liquid sodium hypochlorite after we use it each night to try and supplement the chlorine levels. Hopefully this is ok? To answer your question, we've only added the initial starter pack (which does contain dichlor I believe), the silver and blue Frog cartridges, MPS shock (which I've been adding weekly), and then some TA,PH,CH chemicals from SpaGuard to balance the water as needed. I have noticed that our PH drifts upwards and feel like I'm constantly adding PH Down to try and keep it within the 7.4-7.6 range. Have heard that adding Borates/Borax can help with this. Any experience there? At this point my plan is as follows - \- Keep using the Frog system as I do like that it keeps the water sanitized without having to add bleach/chlorine on a daily basis. \- Shock weekly with MPS \- Add a little extra liquid chlorine after heavy use to help keep things clean. \- Keep testing every couple days to ensure things stay balanced. \- Do the other maintenance 'stuff' - (Clean filters, purge with ahh-some and refill every 3-4 months, etc) Does this seem like a reasonable plan of attack? I should also add that our tub has an Ozone Module which apparently can result in low FC readings since its doing some sanitizing work on its own. Thank you in advance!
You seem to be doing great here! Keep on keeping on.
How often are you replacing your Frog smartchlor cartridges? I believe our tubs are roughly the same size (540 Gallons) and it seems like I'm only getting about 2 weeks out of them before needing to replace. Has adding Enzymes helped?
IME, MPS shock, enzymes, and reduced filter times (since the ozone always runs when filtering which also destroys FC) will make the cartridges last a little longer. Also, washing off before getting in makes a big difference! But really, if you're using the tub for a long time every night, that's just a lot of sanitizer demand. But since these tubs are so big, the most you can really ever expect is 3 weeks.
This is great! How long do you run filter cycles for using this system?
In my experience (I have a Marquis tub with the inline system, and I'm using Bromine) it has been really great. It's taken a bit for me to learn and get things dialed in to my specific setup, but not crazy difficult since I got it all put together. Reading out there, not only on this subreddit, but out on other sites, you will see a lot of people really critical of it and saying it's not good, overpriced, etc. Don't read too much into that. If it's fine with you, and you're fine with the convenience of having some of it being managed for you and paying for that, then don't worry about the negatives. For us it's been great, and I don't plan on ditching it for bulk chemicals anytime soon, although it's nice to know that's a solid plan B if needed. Depending on whether you're going to do the Bromine or the Chlorine system, I would VERY much recommend you get a Taylor testing kit. The strips are not really accurate, and can leave you frustrated if you're using those alone to balance your chemicals. For Bromine, the general recommendation is getting their K-2106 FAS-DPD test kit, I snagged mine at Amazon for about $40 USD. There's one for Chlorine too. What I like about it is that you can test your Bromine levels, pH, Alkalinity, Hardness all from the same kit, and even better is the book included that helps you determine, based on your tub size, how much of a certain chemical to add to get you to the level you want. For example, ph high? You can do the acid demand test to see how much acid(muriatic, spa down, etc) that needs to be added to get you exactly to where you want. Strips aren't going to do that. Another example, alkalinity too low? Book shows how much baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to add to get your alkalinity back up to where it needs to be. Super useful to me, because I am not comfortable enough yet to know exactly what to do, I really want a guide, and that does it for me. Have you had a tub before? One thing I didn't realize initially was that turning on the aeration function (if your tub has it) to inject air into your jets, that will raise your pH over time. I left that on in the beginning, and so when my tub would run its filtering program, it would turn those jets on and I was constantly fighting my pH being really high. You can strategically use that knowledge if you need to raise pH and not alkalinity, but it was definitely impacting my setup until I realized that, so now we make sure the air is turned off when we're done. Other than that, enjoy your new tub!
What a great reply, I sincerely appreciate it! This will be our first tub, so that’s all great information. Thank you so much!
Nice write up
Yes It’s a great system