Green water - Pristine Blue. | Hot Tub Water Chemistry | Forum

jolson said:

Hello. First off, great website. I searched Pristine Blue help and this is what came up, so I hope I can get some answers. My local hot tub dealer started me up on this pristine blue stuff, I was on Soft Soak, but it was getting difficult to keep up with. They told pristine would be a lot easier and cheaper (in the long run). I did my chemical check recently and added all of the stuff I needed to, then the next day the water was really green. I don't think it's algae, but it is kind a greenish tint in the water. Does anyone have any experience with Pristine Blue? Do you like it? And then, any ideas why my water has turned green? Any help is appreciated. This looks like a pretty new forum, so I hope someone finds me here.

This post was originally from waterbear and can be found at PoolSpaForum:

"From biguanide to copper…out of the frying pan into the fire! Soft Soak(bigaunide) is an EPA residual sanitizer. Pristine Blue is NOT. (their EPA registration number is for the copper sulfate it contains. Copper Sulfate is an algaecide. It's kill times are way too long to be an effective sanitizer in a hot tub! Clear water is not alwasy safe water.
Green water in this case either is from the addition of chlorine with some Soft Soak still present (did they replace their filters when they switched and completely drain and refill?) Pristine blue IS used with chlorine and chlorine and Soft Soak or any other biguanide based system are NOT compatible. MPS, the other oxidizer used with Pristine Blue, is also not compatible with biguanide.

Green could also come from overdosing on copper from the PristineBlue. It can color the water green, stain the tub, and stain hair and nails green. Yep, green hair is caused by copper, period! Pristine Blue IS copper, period! "nuff said?
However, I do not feel that the green was a copper overdose in this case.

I strongly suspect that when the switch was made to Pristine Blue the biguanide was not completely destroyed in the tub first A drain and fill is not sufficient. The Tub needs to be oxidized completely to burn of any remaining residual in the plumbing and the filter needs to be discarded and replaced with a new one since the biguanide residue in the filter cannot be removed. When Pristine Blue is started up one of the steps is oxidizing the tub with PristineExtra, which is chlorine. I suspect that the oxidizer oxidized the remaining biguanide and turned it green (which is what color it turns when oxidized, as anyone who has properly converted to a biguanide system to a halogen based sanitizer system can attest to! Pristine Blue IS a halogen based system, BTW! It is NOT chlorine free by any stretch of the imagination!)

The Pristine Blue system has two different oxidizers. PristineExtra is just dichlor, the most common form of chlorine used in hot tubs and PristinePower is just MPS, the standard non chlorine oxidizer or shock used in hot tubs. Pristine Blue is chelated copper sulfate, nothing more than oridinary copper algaecide. Can anyone say ripoff?http://www.poolspaforum.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif

My suggesting is to dump the pristine blue and use either chlorine or bromine in the tub."

Hi jolson,

We have a lot of information about Pristine Blue right here in our hot tub handbook: http://www.thespasyndicate.com…..intenance/

After doing a little research on your predicament, I found that a common cause of green water in pristine blue is too much sanitizer in the water. Due to the copper-based sanitizer, which is commonly turning things green, if you overdose the water with too much pristine blue, it will give it a greenish tint. Is it possible that you put too much "blue" in the water?

The sanitizer level should come down with use, just don't add anymore sanitizer, until the levels have dropped. Hope this helps. If anyone else has ideas, please share them.