Bio-Active 100% Cyanuric Acid Reducer for Swimming Pools │ Non-Toxic CYA Reducer Powder │ 8 oz. │ 1-Pack

Worked as expected - will need another bag though, have just a bit more to go before I reach the right number. When I purchased, my CYA was around 300 or more (lets put it this way, I was way passed the 100 mark on the tube) - I have a 10k and the bag says it will treat up to 25k ... well, I am now at 100. So, it works, but you may need more than one bag depending on size of pool and amount of CYA in pool. Also you should note that it can take up to 10 days to lower your levels - so I will have to wait another 6 days before adding a second bag to be sure. Leslie's charges $49.95, so this is a good price. Now, this wasn't the only thing wrong with my levels, so how it worked for me, may not be what you need (and I suppose I won't really know if it works until I add the second bag and see if it drops to where it needs to be) How I did it : I took out my chlorine duck and let the pool do it's thing (running 8 hours a day) for about 10 days with no chems. Then I washed my filters thoroughly and added the Phos Killer (from walmart $9 - kills 1000 ppm) and ran the pool for 48 hours non stop Then I turned the system off for 24 hours and let the pool sit After 24 hours I washed my filters again and then added my duck back into the pool and let the pool run a normal cycle for another day before FINALLY adding the whole bag of CYA into the skimmer and let the pool run normal cycles for 72 hours before adding the Alkaline Up - then ran it for 12 hours and when I took my water to be tested everything was back to normal except I'm now at a 100 on my CYA rather than 300, so if after 6 more days the levels aren't where they need to be, I think one more bag should do it This is the information I was given about using the Bio-Active product::: Bio-Active uses natural cultures to reduce your CYA, be sure your pool will be habitable for the the organisms to do their job. You should also not that your chlorine will attack these organisms, so it's best to be in normal or low ranges. In addition to providing livable ranges for the active ingredient to thrive in, make sure you take note of the information below to get the most out of each dosage: » Do not add shock or algaecides 7 days prior to application. » Works best in an outdoor pool, uncovered for at least 7 days. » Bio-Active does not work in mineral system pools. » Make sure your pool is free of algae or other contaminants. » Be sure to shut off UV, ozone, and chlorine feeders 15 minutes prior to, and 3 hours after, applying Bio-Active Safely lowers CYA levels within 10 days without needing to drain the pool. Eliminates chlorine lock due to high CYA. Use 1 bag for up to 25,000 gallons. Works best with water over 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I hope this helps anyone having troubles - I know it's a bear of a situation and VERY time consuming .... Don't you remember going to the lake and swimming or fishing, never once thinking of what microscopic things lay in wait? Having never once thought of PH levels or the like? We lived, didn't get sick and kept going back (this is in no way meant to diminish anyone's adverse reactions to such events - merely a personal reflection). Do you think lake or ocean water is cleaner than your pool? Yet here we all are, busting our hump, spending hours and hundreds of dollars even when our pools are sparkling clean and we can't see anything wrong (as is my case - before all this process I mentioned, my water was clear, had no odor and looked great ... but it had been a while since I'd had it professionally tested and wasn't sure if MY test stuff was still optimal, so I took it in and BAM! There was evil lurking in that falsely serene setting of a sparkling pool ready for swimming. Sounds fishy to me, but - here I am, tired, annoyed, poorer and ready to just fill it in and plant grass!

Wish I could say this had no effect. It has actually had a negative effect. I now find myself in the same situation Amir did. I bought one packet of this stuff at the beginning May. My CYA levels were high - between 100 and 150 ppm. I figured might as well give it a shot. Against better judgement, I ordered a packet of this stuff even after seeing the average rating sucks - because my pool guy recommended it. The first packet did absolutely nothing. My chlorine level, pH, total alkalinity and water temperature were all perfect prior to adding the packet. I ran my pump 24/7 after adding the packet. I saw absolutely no drop in my CYA level. I should have stopped there. But I figured what the hell, I'll give it another go. I added another packet 9 days ago. Again, my chlorine level, pH, total alkalinity and water temperature were all perfect prior to adding the packet. This time around, I saw my pH drop drastically within a day of adding the packet. In 3 years of owning my pool this has not happened once to me. And then I saw my chlorine level bottom out completely. My pool became cloudy. I thought it was due to low chlorine. I live in Colorado - liquid chlorine is not readily available. I called several pool shops in the area - no one carries it. So I bought a bucket of calcium hypochlorite. I began adding small amounts to my pool to try and bring the level back up. I have a chlorine feeder and use tablets normally throughout the swimming season. I've never had to have my feeder valve above a 2 setting. I set it to 5. I also had replaced all valves for my feeder about a month ago. My chlorine levels would go up when I added cal-hypo, then tank back out to absolutely nothing within a day - both for total and free chlorine. My pool stayed cloudy. I was adding algaecide and super blue. Still had cloudy water. Then I decided to backwash my filter. Normally I do this every 2 weeks, and I had actually backwashed it a week early just prior to adding this crap to my water. To my surprise, absolutely no media (I have a DE filter) came out in the water when I backwashed it. Normally it leaves a little white area in my lawn where I do. This time around...there was nothing whatsoever. My filter had no media in it at all - despite being recharged a week earlier. In 3 years of owning my pool this has not happened once to me. After recharging my filter, my water finally cleared back up. But my chlorine problems remain. My regular pool people recommended going big - so I put 5 lbs of cal-hpyo into my 20,000 gallon pool. The chlorine levels were higher than I've ever seen then. And then the next day....they were right back to 0, both total and free chlorine. I've gone through about 15 lbs of cal-hypo and around 10 pounds of 3" tablets in the last 5 days and this morning when I went out to check my chlorine levels....they were right back to 0. In 3 years of owning my pool this has not happened once to me. I'm going to have to wind up draining and refilling my pool if this cycle doesn't stop. This product is not only useless, but it can actually be destructive. Please listen to other folks and don't make the same mistake I did.

Followed ALL directions. Pool of 20,000 gallons had CYA of at least 170, possibly as high as 220, based on Aquacheck 7 test strip accuracy. First application in August, 2018. One week later, test strip shows no change. Two weeks later, test strip shows some improvement. During this time, I kept chlorine in the 2-5% range, nothing special, 7.5 pH, water temp near 80 deg. Purchased Taylor test kit with CYA and Free Chlorine capability. Next test, about 3 weeks after first application, Taylor test shows CYA above the 150 range. Had to shock the pool for algae, so I figured the CYA reducer would be destroyed by the high chlorine. Nope. By October, just as I was about to use second pouch treatment, Taylor test shows CYA clearly in the 110 - 120 range. The water would soon be too cold to use of second packet, so I figured to apply it in late Spring. Through the winter, every month the CYA was lower, currently reading at the 30-50 range on the test strip and at under 40 on the Taylor test. The product clearly worked. No question. Unless you want to argue the CYA went down on its own, the product clearly reduced the 170 - 220 range CYA to about 110 after 4 months and to under 60 by the end of Winter. It would appear that, whatever the microbial cultures may be, they can remain active through multiple chlorine shock treatments. We live in CA and I just cannot waste water to drain the pool. If you are in a hurry to reduce CYA, drain the pool. But my experience is that a single application of this product reduced my CYA level by some 75% in 7-8 months, which included multiple chlorine shocks to treat for algae (I run a high pH for cold water during the winter). I will not likely use the second packet at all, but give it away to a neighbor. Highly recommended. I suspect that those using this product are in a hurry, use too much, do not maintain their chlorine, pH or calcium, etc. If my CYA drops any further, I will go back to using the di/tri-chlor tablets this Summer to raise the CYA a bit.

Okay... I've read the reviews and tried this last year. Here's the real deal. It 100% can work. It dropped my pool from 190ppm to 20pm. I use a Taylor kit to measure CYA so it's as accurate as anything non lab. 22k gallon pool. How it works. This is not a chemical. It's a living bacteria that through its biological process can convert CYA into something else which I believe is ammonia. How to use. Knowing that it's alive... your pool cannot contain chlorine when the product is added. I know it says 1-3ppm but that's not going to work as it destroys the product. Use chlorine remover if needed. The water needs to be warm if possible. I did this after labor day when it was too cold really to swim but still warmish. Mix the product and follow the directions to add it. Now... wait. I mean it. It takes a LONG time. I left the pool open and green until it got cold and the algae started to die on its own. I closed the pool as it was. I couldn't help it but I tested the CYA and found it to be around 120. It did work... but it was still too high for my goal. When I opened the pool it actually wasn't very bad. I can only assume the organisms ate the algae as it had zero chlorine. A significant amount of dead algae, which looks similar to sand was on the bottom of the pool. I tested the water for all factors... everything needed adjustment but CYA was around 50. I had won. At this point I was ecstatic. The part they don't tell you... this organism makes what I believe is ammonia from the CYA. Ammonia destroys chlorine at an alarming rate. I added a super shock of cal hypo and brought it to 15ppm. The next morning it was zero. I did this again. Zero next day... I've never had chlorine leave my pool so quickly by any stretch. I knew the game though. You MUST hold the ppm around 15 whatever it takes or the organism can keep multiplying. It's like fighting algae except this organism can destroy chlorine. I bought 8 gallons of liquid when I realized I would deplete the cal hypo. I kept testing and adding cal hypo and then liquid until the rate of loss slowed. After about a week I could hold the chlorine around 8ppm with a "normal" addition. I was out of chlorine though... 15lbs and 8 gallons would normally last me a couple months but it ate it in a week. You need to be ready for this. If you allow the ppm to drop the organism will regenerate and you start over basically which obviously gets expensive fast. Just trust the process and test/add at least twice a day. Trust me when I say you want 15ppm at least. Nobody is swimming so it won't hurt a thing. Heck 30 would be better. Whatever you pick make sure to hold it there until it doesn't drop quickly. Now... at this point the water should be clear. Vac the algae dust and balance the other factors. Notice I didn't do that until now. Lower ph helps chlorine work. Balance as you normally would probably needing some ph up. Keep in mind with lower CYA it will drop chlorine faster than you are accustomed but nowhere like that first week. Enjoy the pool and make sure you never use stabilized chlorine ever again. Liquid is best as it's pure chlorine with water only. Cal hypo is next best but has some downsides. If CYA is too low you might need to add a bit but let's not undo all that work. I believe 30 is plenty. I know it sounds like a lot and it is but is better than draining and refilling 22,000 gallons. Another note... hopefully the manufacturer reads this. My sealed 16oz bag had only 8oz. I have a quality scale and calibration weights. I only measured it because it felt light. I know what 16oz feels like and this wasn't it... turned out I was correct. I was very upset at first but now that it has worked all is forgiven. That said... please fix this as it appears to smudge the reputation. I originally made a very poor review that amazon denied. I still have a video of me weighing the sealed bag to backup my claim but as I said I no longer wish to make a problem of it. I took a star away due to this and the lack of complete instructions like I gave here. If you read other reviews you will see others have had similar experiences. A final note. After all this I ended up going salt chlorine generator. I highly recommend one. I've literally done almost nothing to keep my pool clean this season. With the high CYA I was fighting algae constantly for two seasons. This season with low CYA and SWG I just run the pump ~8hrs a day and add some acid every few days. Vac from time to time. It's crystal clear and I'm done buying chlorine. If you are on the fence, do it. Buy a SWG rated for twice as many gallons as your pool. Another somewhat problematic thing... but yeah they are not rated properly. Go higher. Thanks for reading and I hope you find this helpful.

I had no idea about CYA! I have no excuse for not understanding pool chemistry better than I do, but I don't usually have a ton of issues keeping my pool clear. However the last two years my pool has increasingly required more and more chlorine to even ping my test strips and like lightening it would dissappear. I have had a few readings of high stabilizer but didn't think much of it until I realized the balance between CYA and chlorine content. I absolutely hate the thought of draining my pool, but I was consistently getting readings between 250 and 200 ppm cya. I searched for alternatives to draining and found this product. I researched reviews here as well as pool forums and found some pretty mixed reviews. I decided to give it a shot despite the ify success rates. I'm glad I did. My pool is above ground and slightly over 10000 gallons. My high CYA readings of over 200 ppm prompted me to use all 8oz at once. I followed the directions and made sure my pool was balanced (aside from chlorine) around 70 degrees before I attempted to treat. The bioactive dissolved easy enough in three gallons of water and I dispersed around my pool. I have kept my chlorine down to zero. At the end of day one, I started getting a slight haziness to my water. It improved by the end of day 2 but is still lingering around day 3. I keep my filter running for about 10 hours a day. I have backwashed once without the need to top off the pool water. I decided to test at the end of day three and I'm happy to report I am around 100 ppm CYA ! I use the chlorox pool strips and yes, I get it, those have a margin of error and an estimate of the true number. However the color of the strips for cya are more pink. They used to be dark purple almost instantly before treatment. I decided to do a 50/50 dilution test and got a 50ppm reading, further proving the first strip test. I'm going to give this a few more days before I shock the pool to clear out the cloudiness. I am switching to non stabilized chlorine and shock in the future. I still have plenty of pucks and shock should I need to increase my cya in the future. I am thrilled this is working. Follow the directions and trust the process. I had to fight the urge to abort at the end of day two. I promised myself to give the product 5 days to show something. I'm glad day three proved to show some improvement. I'll update this review once this is complete.

UPDATE - It's been about 7 years (time flies) since I bought this, went through a nightmare experience, and wrote the below review. I still haven't had to replace my water, and I tell you, it was a bad and frightening experience, but I'd most likely do it again (hopefully with the knowledge I have now), instead of replacing the water. Maybe I'm saying that now because I don't fully remember how bad the experience was, lol. But, at least I didn't have to replace the water :) Original Review - I've been through a two and a half month nightmare with this product and it has been absolutely nothing but regret. I ended up using FOUR packets of this thing for it to finally work. For it to even begin working, your chlorine level must be at ZERO (not between 2 to 5 like they say). The first two packs I put in there did absolutely nothing (even though my pool was in optimal condition). However, once my chlorine dropped to zero and stayed there for about a week, the third packet started working. The pool was extremely cloudy by that time, and I couldn't even see 2 inches below (I've attached a picture of how it looked before it started working, and a picture of how it should look). At this point, cyanuric acid went down from approximately 190 to 80 (I had to buy a $55 Taylor kit to test it). So, I got extremely excited, and added the 4th packet, which within 3 days took it down from 80 to 35. I was besides myself in joy thinking this product was magical... However, unfortunately the excitement didn't last long. That's when I thought I could start adding some chlorine to clear the cloudiness, so I added about 5 gallons and absolutely nothing. For the next week I added 3 or 4 gallons a day, and again nothing. Then I added 10 more gallons and two packets of tricholor shock and within a couple days the pool became crystal clear, so I thought FINALLY problems were over. Then I check chlorine the next day and it was down to zero AGAIN!!! I'm like WTF!!! I kept on adding chlorine and within minutes it was back to zero. The pool store people were baffled and had no clue what was going on. That's when I started doing a ton of research and did this thing called, bucket test for chlorine demand (you basically take a 5 gallon pool water sample inside and test for chlorine demand on a much smaller scale). After several days, my chlorine demand was at 340 ppm, that's over 80 gallons of chlorine in a 25,000 gallon pool, costing upwards of $400, which is INSANE (I've attached a couple pictures of just SOME of chlorine I bought). So then, I did more research. Turns out that some bacteria will naturally turn your CYA into ammonia, and that's exactly what this product is supposed to do. However, this product is supposed to have a second stage of bacteria attack that turns ammonia to nitrogen, but apparently that doesn't happen every time, and if it doesn't, YOU ARE SCREWED!! It leaves a massive amount of ammonia in your pool which is a disaster to get rid of (I had to buy an ammonia test kit too and I've attached pictures of how that looked and how it's supposed to looked, it was almost 8ppm - that's nuts). On top of that, it can also leave partially degraded cyanuric acid in your pool, which is even harder to get rid of than ammonia. That's why I needed over 80 gallons of chlorine to stabilize my pool. Once I knew what was going on, I went to war on this thing. Took the day off from work and for the first 5 hours, kept my chlorine level at between 60 to 80 ppm. It was dropping by about 20ppm every 10 minutes and I kept on adding gallon after gallon after gallon of chlorine. The thing is that if you don't maintain that very high level of chlorine, the bacteria will start reproducing again and you'll have to start all over (I was taking no chances). Finally, after 5 hours, chlorine started to hold and I let it drop to 40 ppm overnight and kept it there for the next day. It's been over a week now (I've been keeping it to around 20ppm), and things are almost fully stabilized. It's still dropping a tad more than it should, but I think I'm getting pretty close. I ended up learning a lot, and how to deal with this, with the help of some of the best and smartest people out there. I took the advice of some serious chemical engineer type people and you can read more about my journey and all the advice everyone gave me, on this forum - [...]-After-using-Cyanuric-Acid-Reducer-my-pool-won-t-hold-chlorine Here's my advice to you - - First of all, fire your pool guys. They don't know what they're doing and they're the ones who let your CYA level go through the roof. - Follow the BBB method of maintaining your pool, Google it, but you basically add liquid bleach to raise chlorine, Borax to raise PH, Baking soda to raise alkalinity, and Muriatic acid to lower those last two. Everything else either adds CYA or calcium to your pool (both of them will require you to replace some of your water). - If you end up with very high level of CYA, and you're not in a drought stricken area, most definitely replace your water instead of using this very expensive and potentially disastrous product. - If you are in a drought area (I'm in Los Angeles) and can't replace your water, look into reverse osmosis - they basically come out and remove almost every chemicals from your pool through some complex process. It takes a few days (I believe) to get rid of everything and costs around $400. Dealing with this product can take months (as it did for me; half the summer is gone) and could be more costly, as it was for me. - If you have any questions or need help with something, go to troublefreepool.com. Those guys are fantastic. How much did this cost me? 4 packets of Cyanuric Acid Reducer - $100 (they were nice enough to send me two free packets) 90 or so gallons of chlorine - $350 Taylor 2006 kit - $55 Replacement reagents - $40 Ammonia test kit - $10 two shirts and a pair of shoes - $200 (good luck dealing with that much chlorine over two months and not ruining your clothes) Losing half the summer and wasting all that time - priceless. So, there's my story with the "magical" Cyanuric Acid Reducer. Go ahead and use it if you want, but don't say you weren't warned!!! This is an untested brand-new product. If it's still on the market in two years, which I highly doubt, then start using it :)

The main thing to be aware of about his product is that it has a very strange requirement of Chlorine levels. The seller has should have put a picture of the back of the packet which has instructions but they have not do I am attaching it here. Please read the highlighted part before purchasing because if cya is high there’s very good chance that chlorine is high too and in that case this product won’t work.

Having issues bouncing my water and my CYA level was very high and I wasn’t gonna empty the pool somewhat because I don’t know how to do that so I took a chance on this product and it corrected the problem and it’s been the perfect level ever since I highly recommend it to have it on hand, even if you don’t use it and you do know how to let some of the water out of your pool to put in fresh water at at least it worked so I give it five stars no work at all no problem at all handling it just follow the direction and I do believe it was a good price compared to the other place as I looked it sells the same product

Simply no effect at all although my pool was absolutely perfect in terms of temperature, ph, chlorine etc. There really is no substitute for drain and refill.

Extermly happy with the product. Our CYA came down from 168ppm to 111pp. In a mater of 5 days. That's saved us having to drain and refill the better part of pool.

Didn’t do anything to the cyanuric levels at all

Followed all the instructions to the letter and it did reduce the cyanuric acid level a bit but no where near what I had expected, given the result and the price it would have been cheaper and quicker just to change the water.

terrible product did not work at all. My CYA levels stayed the same. when I asked for a refund they only gave me less than a 1/4 of what I paid.