Cloudy water?

[searchinginfl]

I finally got my alk & ph up to the right levels, now my water is cloudy. I have a Caldera Niagra. Ozone, spa frog, dichlor/mps regimen. What will uncloud my water? All my levels seem to be OK, but I have cloudy water with foam when the jets are on.

Any tips? I am a 2-3x/week user.

[H823Putt]

How old is your water?  The foam could be from your bathing suits. Make sure you do not wash them with detergent. There will always be some left in them no matter how good your rince cycle is.

[searchinginfl]

My water is about 5-6 weeks old. I'm not so worried about the foam, I've had a little foam for the past few weeks. But I haven't been in since Wednesday, and just opened the lid to cloudy water. I shocked on Wednesday as well.

[In Canada eh]

Check your chlorine level, if it is in range, just wait and give it time to work.  If its low, add enough to bring the level to 2-4ppm 20 minutes after adding.  Cloudy water takes time to clear.  You could also try adding a small amount of clarifier and then run your tub on low speed for about two hours and  then rinse your filter

[searchinginfl]

my chlorine is reading about 4-5ppm, but 20 minutes later, no free chlorine. Should I add more?

[hottubdan]

Add more.  For some reason you have bacteria in there clouding the water.  It is rapidly using up the chlorine you are adding.  Until you can get a reading 20 to 30 minutes after adding, there will be chlorine demand.

[tony]

I would give it a shock dose...10 ppm free chlorine....then filter.

[Bonibelle]

Do they make a spa frog to use with dichlor? I'm confused about the Spa Frog. Didn't someone just post about Caldera going to the spa frog/bromine system?

[hottubdan]

I think you can use frog with chlorine or bromine.

[Bonibelle]

Yep, you're right Dan.  I looked it up and apparently there is a mineral cartridge that goes inside of the filters..you use that with chlorine and they also call it a frog. for some reason I thought the frog only refered to the bromine/mineral combo. sorry

[loosenupspas]

Searching....i am in a hurry right now.  Water clarity tends to be your filter

[searchinginfl]

I shocked enough and it is clear today. I put a ton of dichlor in, it smells like chlorine, but today, of course, it doesn't register on a test strip, even though it smells. I guess my cya is high? Time to use bleach?

Also, based on advice from my local pool store, I added 1/2 pound of alk increaser (he told me to add at least a pound because it was so low, so was my ph). Now, both are reading a little high. How do I lower them both (alk & ph) the bad advice guy said it will come down on its own. Could that be why my water was cloudy?

[searchinginfl]

I cleaned my filter yesterday morning when I saw the cloudiness, it wasn't that dirty, but it took 24 hours to clear up. I wish I knew what caused it so it won't happen again!

[In Canada eh]

searchinginfl,

   At some point in time your chlorine level must have dropped enough to allow some type of "nastie" to multiply and turn your water cloudy.  pH levels could have also been the culprit because chlorine works best in the 7 to 7.8 range.  The fact that your water smells like chlorine means that there is a high level of Combined Chlorine (CC) present in your tub.  If you have a taylor test kit test your water for CC, you will probably find that you need to shock your water again to get rid of the CC.  Chlorine in the proper range has no smell at all.

  I would definitely not use bleach to shock your tub, just use MPS or dichlor.  Bleach will drive your pH levels crazy.

  You want to keep your ALK. in the 80 to 150 range as that will act as a buffer for your pH levels and not allow wild pH changes.  Keep your pH in the 7.2 to 7.8 range.  You can add dry acid to decrease the pH and ALK levels if they are too high

  Don't worry it gets easier with time

[BauerN]

searchinginfl,

   I would definitely not use bleach to shock your tub, just use MPS or dichlor.  Bleach will drive your pH levels crazy.

I notice bleach comes up fairly often on the forum.

One note of interest:  Most acrylic in the industry is supplied by a company called Aristech - Aristech specifically cautions against bleach use.