Frog System/New Pool

[thelma]

I'm a brand new pool owner (11,000 gallon Kayak Pool) who needs some advice. Maybe someone can answer a question...

My new pool came with the Frog Feeders System installed. Since I'm very new to all this, I don't want to remove it.

My question is can I use baking soda and/or borax for alkalinity and PH? I've read that I can't go with the full 3 B's system, but can I use some of the B's?

Thanks for the help....

Thelma

[JohnInSoCal]

I have a frog, you can still use 3 B's. The frog provides chlorine via a bac pack they call it. It's just chlorine tabs (dichlor I think) in the bac pack. These will raise your CYA over time which is why people on here reccomend against using this type of chlorine. It also has a mineral pack. You will still need to use baking soda/borax or acid to control PH.

The chlorine pacs are expensive so I stopped using them and just put pucks in there, I will be switching to SWG soon. You can run the mineral pack only and use bleach if you want for chlorination. Whether the minerals actually accomplish much of anything is anybodys guess, I think it's more marketing hype than anything.

good luck

[bassadict69]

Mineral Pack???? Exactly what is a mineral pack? What all is in it?

[JohnInSoCal]

the mineral pack contains silver, zinc, and limestone. According to the mfr

"The silver controls bacteria, the silver and zinc working together help prevent algae, and the limestone absorbs acids from chlorine and shocks helping to maintain a neutral pH."

The claim is you can use less chlorine because of the use of the minerals. The erosion feeder has a dial on it to meter how much water goes through the feeder and therefore how much chlorine is put into the pool.

It is somewhat convenient to use the chlorine packs and once you have it dialed in it's easy to maintain. However the chlorine packs are expensive, so just purchasing tablets seems to work as well for me until I get my SWG system installed.

[thelma]

John, Thanks for your response. I'm a nervous wreck about this pool chemistry stuff. I wanted to make sure the bleach (borax and baking soda) won't cause a weird reaction with the chlorine bac-pacs in the Frog unit.

The bac pacs are expensive, but I got a case with my pool so I'll use the system this season and make a decision next year about doing straight B/B/B

Thelma