chlorine level in attached spa

My in-ground pool has an attached spa with a spillover (not sure if that's the right word) cut into the wall between spa and pool, so water can flow back and forth between the two.

I keep a chlorine tab bucket in my pool. Should I also keep one in the spa? I've tested the chlorine level in the spa and found that it's almost as high as in the pool, even without chlorine tabs. My filter system is set up so that some of the filtered water returns to the pool and some returns to the spa. So I'm assuming that some of the chlorinated pool water is returning into the spa. But the person who owned this home before me, kept a chlorine bucket in the spa as well as the pool.

I don't know if the spa needs to be as chlorinated as the pool, and how that should be handled. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If the pool is properly chlorinated at the appropriate FC/CYA ratio and if the spa water is the same, then you're fine. The spa doesn't need higher disinfection since the level in the pool is at the level high enough to prevent algae growth and that's much higher than needed to kill most bacterial pathogens.

great, thanks for the reply.