If putting the borax in makes you nervous you can always go out and buy a product like Proteam Supreme or Bioguard Optimizer or one of the other Tetraborate 'water enhancers' and use that. It will do exactly the same thing and cost twice as much or more!
The ingredient in these products is sodium tetraborate which is the chemical name for borax! Here is what Ben has to say about these products (but remember that this is before I did the "Great Tetraborate Experiment" in the China Shop!)
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/grocery.html
Read the borax section!
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