canthony

If this is the same as the cellulose fiber stuff, I can tell you that I never managed to get that stuff to work at all. Switched back to DE without issues after a month.

Success, or so it appears. At midnight last night, FC was 13.5. This morning, it read: 13.5. No measurable drop overnight (of course, this was using the .5ppm accuracy K2006 test). By the way, my pool looks amazing. For the three years I have lived here, I have had constant mustard algae growth on the walls of my pools and increasing trouble with green algae. I have spent hundreds of dollars in the past few months trying to fix this, and in the end it has been completely resolved using about $30 worth of bleach. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Well, I really thought I had it. I maintained the shock level at 15 all day long and opened up and cleaned out the filter. At the end of the day, the FC level seemed to have stabilized. I went to bed with it at 17.5. But I checked again this morning at 10 am and, lo and behold: FC 9.5. So it continues. I added 192 oz of 6% to bring it back above 15 and I'll try to leave it there all day again.

I thought I'd comment on this since I just finished dealing with the exact same situation. My pool got out of control - lots of green algae, tons of shocking and treatments needed. Once all the algae was dead, I found that there were still brown/black/dark green stains along my walls where the worst of the algae had been. These stains simply would not come off with regular scrubbing and shocking. After finding this site, I realized that I had not been shocking using the appropriate amounts of chlorine. I followed the guidelines here and went to poolcalculator.com. Based on it's suggestions, I added chlorine up the mustard algae shock level (I also had mustard algae). Not only did this greatly improve my overall pool conditions, all of the stains disappeared immediately, after having been there for months. Keep in mind, depending on your CYA levels, this may require a much greater amount of chlorine than you are used to; possibly something like 10 gallons of 6% bleach (recommended) or 10 lbs of cal-hypo (not my recommendation, due to the CH increase).

By 6 pm yesterday, FC was back down to 5. To continue shocking, I then added 4 more gallons of 6% to bring FC back up to 15. It was 6.5 again this morning, although that was at 10am again so it's not a valid overnight test (alright, so I'm not an early riser). However, with a drop that large there doesn't seem to be any chance that I would have passed that test. Given those numbers, it's unlikely that I'll even be within acceptable ranges by this evening.

Actually, I was aiming for a mustard algae shock (as per poolcalculator.com) at my new cya level of around 50. Also figured it would be good to err a little high. I measured my FC at around 10 am today, and it was 15. That's very encouraging to me, because previously my FC has always been zero in the morning. However, should I really expect a drop of less .5 overnight, even at such high concentrations (>31ppm)? Pool looks great by the way, and the residual chlorine level tells me I'm on the right path. I haven't had my FC read above zero in months, except immediately after adding chlorine.

Alright, so my K2006 arrived and here are my test results: FC: 0.2 CC: 0.0 PH: 7.5 CYA: 65 TA: 100 CH: 300 I consulted the pool calculator, and immediately removed 25% of my water. I then shocked with 10 gallons of 6% sodium hypochlorite. This should hopefully get me ahead of the curve and then I can begin regular maintenance tomorrow. One interesting thing that I never thought about before: after shocking with so much chlorine, my pH increased to 8.2. Am I supposed to treat this immediately after shocking? I would imagine that adding acid at this point would simply react with and cancel out some of the chlorine.

Richard, thanks for the quick response. I believe the pool company I had out here was using a high end Taylor kit, but I have gone ahead and ordered a K2006 to double check. There isn't much point in me continuing to dump chlorine in if my CYA somehow actually is 250. Until that gets here, I'll have to just try to keep things from getting too out of hand. BTW, what do we think the odds are that Jack's Stain remover is at all responsible for my problems? Thanks, Craig

Hi, new user here. My pool has become a bit of a disaster so I thought I'd bring my problems here. Starting this spring, I started to get incessant algae blooms, both green and yellow. I followed my normal regimen of using yellow out and shocking with 73% cal hypo. Long story short, this did not work. I couldn't keep ahead of the algae and now my FC are consistently at zero. I have shocked a dozen times (switched to 10% liquid chlorine), using anywhere between 1 and 8 gallons of bleach. No matter how much I use, chlorine shows as zero by the next day. Shocking kills most of the algae but unless I put in a gallon every day it comes back immediately. I tested my water, took it to a pool store, and had it tested by a pool pro. My CYA reading was 30, the pool pro's was 65, and the pool store's was 250! Needless to say, I don't trust the store as I use unstabilized chlorine products and minimal tabs. However, something is clearly going on here. Is it just that there is so much algae in the pool that it is consuming my chlorine immediately? Or is there a more significant problem going on? Phosphates are over 1ppm, and I have begun treatment with Phosfree, but from what I have read on this forum that appears to be a waste of time. More background: 20,000g, DE filter, new water a year or two ago. Last fall I used a large amount of Jack's Magic Copper & Scale remover (according to instructions). This removed my stains, but could be contributing to these problems. Advice? Any would be appreciated. Thanks, Craig