Bath Ball® Replacement Cartridge

A hot bath should feel like a reset, not smell like a swimming pool. When city water fills a tub, the chlorine in it rises with the steam, and a deep bath puts a lot of that water against your skin. The Bath Ball filter treats the water as the tub fills, and this replacement cartridge is the part that does the work.

The Bath Ball Replacement Cartridge is a round, reversible bath filter disk packed with Crystal Quest ERA 6500 and ERA 9500 redox media. Every gallon that pours from the tub faucet flows through it on the way into the bath, so you get filtered bath water without changing a thing about how you run a bath.

At a glance

• Redox media made for hot water: Crystal Quest rates ERA 6500 and ERA 9500 media for water from 35°F to 212°F
• Targets chlorine and the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulfide as the tub fills
• Reversible disk: flip it periodically to balance filtration and extend its useful life
• Long service life: 12 to 18 months per cartridge
• Tool-free change: pull the old disk up, push the new one down

What you are looking at

A round white cartridge with a six-segment steel mesh face. Behind the mesh sits a bed of filter media beads. The disk presses into the bottom of the Bath Ball housing, which hangs from your tub faucet by its handle. Water enters the ball, passes down through the disk and leaves from the bottom into the tub. The drop-down design holds a generous amount of media, which gives the water more contact time on its way through.

How a bath filter cartridge works

Redox, not just a sponge

ERA (Eagle Redox Alloy) is Crystal Quest's own high-purity copper-zinc granular media. As water flows across the granules, electrons move between the metals and dissolved contaminants. That oxidation-reduction reaction, redox for short, is how the media reduces chlorine. ERA 6500 is the chlorine specialist. ERA 9500 targets iron and hydrogen sulfide.

Why redox suits a bath

Most people fill a tub hot. Filter media that only adsorb, like carbon, depend on contact time, and a tub fills fast. Redox media react with chlorine instead, and Crystal Quest rates ERA for influent water all the way to 212°F, so the hot fill is exactly the job it is built for.

Why you reverse the disk

Water follows the easiest path through a media bed. Over time that path, a channel, carries more of the flow and the media beside it sits idle. Flipping the disk sends water the other way, balances filtration across the whole bed and extends the useful life of the cartridge.

Hardness and cartridge life

The 12 to 18 month life is estimated for water under 100 ppm hardness. Hard water works the media harder and can shorten that life, so in hard water areas plan on the shorter end.

What it reduces

Primary targets:

• Chlorine, the swimming-pool smell in a hot bath
• Chloramine
• Hydrogen sulfide, the rotten-egg odor

Also reduced: iron and rust-colored water, heavy metals, and dirt and sediment held back by the mesh.

Not designed to treat: hardness minerals (it is not a water softener), bacteria and viruses, fluoride, nitrate or total dissolved solids. For treated water at every tap, not just the tub, see Crystal Quest whole house water filters.

Why Crystal Quest

• Our own media. ERA 6500 and ERA 9500 are Crystal Quest redox alloys, the same family of media in our drinking water cartridges and whole house systems.
• A cartridge that lasts. 12 to 18 months per disk, and the disk reverses to get the most from every bead of media.
• Over 1,000,000 people served since 1994, under ISO 9001 quality management.
• Real help. If a new cartridge does not fit your ball, send our team a photo of your Bath Ball and we will match the right part.

Where it fits

This cartridge, part number CQE-RC-04052, is the replacement for the Crystal Quest Bath Ball Filter in every color, including the Bath Ball in the 2-in-1 Combo Shower Filter and Bath Ball Bundle. Crystal Quest shower filters use a different cartridge, the Shower Filter Replacement Cartridge (CQE-RC-04045). Single, Pack of 2, Pack of 4 and Pack of 6 all contain this same cartridge.

Common questions