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Dosing Chemicals lets an organization add its own chemical products — ones not on AquaOps’ built-in dosing chart, or a different-strength bottle of one that is — to the dose calculator shown on chemical record detail pages.

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Purpose

Chemical record detail pages can show a Recommended Dose card telling an operator roughly how much of a product to add to move an out-of-range reading toward its ideal value. AquaOps ships with generic industry-standard (PHTA/CPO) dosing figures for common products. Use Settings > Dosing Chemicals when your facility uses a product that isn’t in that standard list, or uses a different concentration of one that is. This page is unrelated to the July 29, 2026 “Custom fields for chemical readings” changelog item — that feature lets admins add arbitrary extra fields (number, text, yes/no) to a specific pool’s chemical record form from that pool’s chemical-records settings. Dosing Chemicals, covered here, only affects the dose-recommendation calculator and is configured org-wide, not per pool. See Chemical Records for the custom-fields feature.

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How it connects to chemical records and pool profiles

  • Pools and Chemical Profiles defines each pool’s ideal/alert/closure thresholds — those thresholds are what determine a reading is out of range in the first place.
  • Chemical Records is where a reading is logged and evaluated against those thresholds.
  • When a saved record is out of range, its detail page shows the Recommended Dose card, calculated from the pool’s gallons (set in Settings > Pools) and the ppm the reading needs to move.
  • For each out-of-range field, the card offers a product picker. That list combines AquaOps’ built-in products with any org-wide custom dosing chemicals you’ve configured here.
Custom dosing chemicals defined on this page appear as extra choices in that product picker for every pool in the organization — they aren’t scoped to one pool.

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Configuring a custom dosing chemical

Go to:
You enter each chemical the same way its product label reads: how much to add, for how big a ppm change, in how many gallons.

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Fields

  • Label — the product name, e.g. “Acme Pool Shock 73%”
  • Form — Dry (measured in oz) or Liquid (measured in fl oz)
  • Amount and Gallons — the reference dose, e.g. “16 oz in 10,000 gal”
  • Effects — one or more field/direction/ppm-change rows describing what that dose does. Most products affect a single field (e.g. raise free chlorine); some, like Dichlor, affect two (raise free chlorine and raise cyanuric acid) and need two effect rows on the same chemical.
Effect fields available: Free Chlorine, Alkalinity, Calcium Hardness, Cyanuric Acid (stabilizer), Combined Chlorine, pH. AquaOps normalizes whatever you enter into a standard “amount per ppm per 10,000 gallons” rate at read time — it isn’t stored pre-normalized, so the list always reflects your latest edit.
1

Open Dosing Chemicals

Go to Settings > Dosing Chemicals.
2

Add a chemical

Enter the label, form, and the reference dose exactly as the product label states it.
3

Add effects

Add one effect row per field the dose actually changes, with direction and ppm change.
4

Save

Select Add chemical. It’s immediately available as a product option on every pool’s dose recommendations.
5

Edit or remove later

Use Edit to update a chemical (this replaces all of its effect rows) or Remove to deactivate it.

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Removing a chemical

Remove is a soft delete (deleted_at is set) — the chemical drops out of the list and the product picker, but existing chemical records that referenced a dose calculated from it are not altered.

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The dosing disclaimer

The dose-recommendation card itself (on a chemical record’s detail page, not this settings page) shows a liability disclaimer banner the first time a user sees it, regardless of whether the dose came from a built-in or a custom chemical:
Dose recommendations are decision-support guidance for a certified operator to verify — not an instruction to blindly follow. Your facility remains responsible for chemical dosing decisions; see the Terms of Service for full details.
A user dismisses it by selecting I understand, which is recorded per account (dosing_disclaimer_acknowledged_at on their user record) — once acknowledged, it stops appearing anywhere for that person. The card also always shows a persistent footer note that the figures are generic industry guidance, not a substitute for the actual product label.

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Who can manage this

Anyone can view the Dosing Chemicals list. Adding, editing, or removing a custom chemical requires the org:manage or chemical_records:edit permission. This page is also gated behind the chemical_records feature flag for the organization.

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Best practices

  • enter the reference dose exactly as printed on the product label — don’t round or convert units
  • add a separate effect row for every field a single dose actually changes (check the label for secondary effects like Dichlor’s cyanuric acid contribution)
  • use a new custom chemical entry for a different-strength bottle of an existing product rather than editing the built-in figures
  • always verify a recommended dose against the physical product label before adding chemicals to a pool

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Suggested screenshots

  • Dosing Chemicals settings list with a couple of custom entries
  • add/edit custom dosing chemical form showing multiple effect rows
  • Recommended Dose card on a chemical record showing a custom chemical selected in the product picker
  • the dosing disclaimer banner on first view