What are "Total Dissolved Solids" ?

[rtpatter]

I went to Leslie's pool store just for the free water anaylsis and now the pool store manager is trying to pull me back to the "dark side" . He asked how long the pool had been opened and what I used to shock it with. I told him bleach and he gave me a blank stare and asked "Who told you to do that?" I said I read it somewhere and it worked last year and it was cheap. He then went on to expalin how shock is cheaper than bleach. I didn't argue but I said using shock and tablets to manage your pool will skyrocket your CYA making your chlorine less effective right? He said my CYA is at 20 and that unless your CYA is over 400 then there is only marginal difference in the effectiveness of the chlorine. But he did say on average you should try to keep your CYA between 30 - 60 then added that it would take 2 35lb buckets of trichlor tabs to raise you CYA in your pool 20 ppm( I have a 23k pool). To make him happy I bought 4lbs of CYA and 7 lbs of pucks. I plan on using this in conjuction w/bleach to manage my pool. I only added 2lbs of the CYA today I'll let the pucks do the rest.

The other thing he said; the main negative of bleach; is that it skyrockets your TDS level (Total Dissolved Solids) and eventually you will have to drain your pool to cure this! I have never heard of this on this forum before. He said that bleach is only 6% chlorine which I know but that you are adding 94% of unwanted stuff to your pool. Which I thought thats why we all use bleach because it doesn't add unwanted stuff. So if anyone can please let me know about the TDS level and is it something I should be concerned with.

The pool store guy is actually a nice guy but obviously he's a bit partial to pool store products.