I have a 6 year old saltwater gunite pool. Your PH will almost never be "stable". Bubbles increase PH. The salt cell is producing small bubbles the entire time its generating chlorine. Also if you have bubblers or deck jets on a lot, they will increase PH. You will always have to add acid with a saltwater pool.

That being said, some people are absolute freaks when it comes to water chemistry. I am not. My water stays CRYSTAL CLEAR and I run my variable speed pump/salt cell on a 24/7 schedule at minimum speeds to "turn the pool over" once a day. I follow the troublefreepool method and use their test kit/app to keep up with it. In south LA I never "close" my pool.

Usually in April when it starts to get close to swimming temps, I will break out the kit and do a full water test then adjust everything to the level it needs to be. From there I check the PH maybe every week or 2, depending on how much we swim (I adjust it before my young kids swim). I check chlorine with the quick drop Taylor color test thing on the same schedule just to make sure the salt cell is keeping up with chlorine demand. Every month or so I check the CYA (stabilizer) depending on how much rain we get and how much I have to pump out the pool. I keep that within recommended range, so the chlorine stays protected. The other stuff I MAYBE check one more time that year....in winter I dont do shite. Maybe check the PH and chlorine a couple times if the water starts to look off, but there isnt much chlorine demand in winter.

A lot of "big" pool stores will try to sell you all kinds shite to put in your water. In reality you can get most things at lowes/HD. I keep a big box of granular stabilizer from amazon on hand, a 2 pack of muriatic acid gallons from HD for PH, and a couple gallons of liquid chlorine from HD if I want to quickly boost the chlorine to "shock" the pool. I've never put actual pool shock or any other magic elixir in my water. Once a year or so I buy some calcium from amazon too.

Its all really simple once you read enough to understand water chemistry and what each product will do and what environmental factors affect each part of the chemistry. shite I barely check my skimmers once a week, but I dont have many trees around. Also, if you have cartridge filters, invest in skimmer socks from amazon. They will catch a lot of the fines that clog your filters. You can go much longer between cleanings with them on your baskets.