Natural Chemistry products aiming at reducing phosphates. Should I use it?

[cdysthe]

Hi,

Over the last coupe of years my pool dealer is always telling me that "phosphates are high" and that I need to treat it with products from Natural Chemistry, most often the combination product called PhosFree+Pool Perfect. The products are expensive and I have been saying no, but I thought I would ask here if these products are any good and recommended for use in my salt water pool. I find it kind of peculiar that all of a sudden, two years ago, phosphates became a problem exactly at the same time my pool dealer started carrying these products.

[sunlove]

Yep my pool store sold me that product last season, before I knew better. Didn't notice that it really did anything. PoolDoc said for me to throw it away, lol. I think your last sentence is dead on!

[waterbear]

A bit of history...we NEVER treated pools for phosphates for many years until someone discovered that they could sell very inexpensive Lanthanum salts to remove phosphates from pool water and that pool stores could make a lot of money doing so. All of a sudden phosphates were the scourge of every pool and if we did not get rid of them our pools would turn green and stay that way. Funny how all we needed before these products was chlorine! Anyway, China has greatly increased the price of the raw material (Lanthanum salts) so the profitability if going down and I expect that we will see a lot less emphasis on phosphate removers.
Also, nitrate is an algae food also but since the only way to remove nitrate is by water replacement the chemical companies and retailers cannot sell us anything to remove the nitrate at a profit so they just don't talk about it nor do we test for it.