Cloudy and white dots

I am unable to get my water cleared up and when the sun is out you can see little white dots floating around everywhere. When I vacuum the pool through the cartridge a huge amount of milky water comes out and clouds up the water. In the last 2 days I have been able to barely see the bottom of the pool after the pump has been of overnight but as the pump comes on it clouds up worse.

My cover slipped off of he pool during the winter filling it with only God knows what. I have been taking my water to the local Leslie's and they have been testing and giving me more chemicals to add. They are telling me that all of my parameters are in line and have given me to different types of clarifiers that haven't helped either. One of the clarifiers was blue and needed to be diluted and the other was yellow that you spray over the pool.

I have a above ground pool that is like a intex with a saltwater generator. It is 8800 gallons with a cartridge filter. I have tried the standard vac that goes through the cartridge and the catphish vac.

My last test results where
FAC 5
TAC 5
Salt 3300
CH 230
CYA 60
TA 80
pH 7.2
COPPER 0
IRON 0
Pho 0
Temp 75

All of your help would be greatly appreciated

Quit adding all those things that the pool store is selling you. It is not helping.

Have you been using cal-hypo which is often sold as bags of shock? If so, don't add any more as your calcium hardness level is getting pretty high. You also don't want to use trichlor tabs or dichlor shock powder. They both have CYA (stabilizer) in them and your CYA level is already plenty high. I'd suggest just sticking with bleach or liquid chlorine.

Since your pool is cloudy, I'd suggest shocking your pool. (Don't use your SWCG to shock your pool as it will just shorten the cell life. Just turn it off for now.) Shock level is based on CYA levels. (See the Best Guess Chlorine Chart in my signature below.) With a CYA of 60, your shock level is 20. In an 8800 gallon pool, each gallon (4 quarts) of plain, unscented 6% bleach (generic is fine) will add just under 7ppm of chlorine. Each quart will add about 1.7ppm. Use these amounts as a reference to help you to know how much bleach to add each evening. Test your water in the evenings, and each time add enough bleach to get back to around 20ppm.

Sounds like you don't have a test kit. We recommend the Taylor K-2006 or 2006C which you can get through the test kit page in my signature. Do yourself a favor and order one. In the meantime, see if your Walmart has an HTH 6-Way kit to buy. If not, at least pick up an OTO/Phenol Red (yellow and red drops) kit. Either one of these kits will do until you can order the better kit. (It is not available locally and will have to be ordered online.)

Your pH is ok at 7.2 but if it goes any lower, you'll want to bump it up some with some 20 Mule Team Borax (laundry aisle at Walmart). PH readings are inaccurate at high chlorine levels, so test it in the evenings before you add bleach.

Hope this helps. Come back with further questions and tell us when you get a kit and what you get.


Welcome to the Pool Forum!

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Originally Posted by jcowar32

When I vacuum the pool through the cartridge a huge amount of milky water comes out and clouds up the water.

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Uhh. That pretty much tells you, you need new cartridges. If you use Intex cartridges, if you tell me the Intex size, I can probably recommend some aftermarket Unicel cartridges that will out-perform the originals, especially if you get two, and clean them properly.

My filter takes the A cartridge.

Cleaning supplies -- you can get all these locally. TSP is usually in the paint section. Any clean plastic 5 - 10 gallon bucket with a lid will work for soaking:

Rubbermaid BRUTE Gray 10 Gal Container w/o Lid @ Amazon
Round Brute Lid For 10-Gallon Waste Containers, 16" Diameter, Gray
1lb Savogran 10621 Trisodium Phosphate (TSP) @ Amazon

Cartridge -- you need 2:

Unicel C-4607 Replacement Filter Cartridge (Easy Set Size A or C) @ Amazon

If you shop around on Amazon, be very careful. Most of the products that say "Unicel" somewhere in the description are NOT Unicel, but one of a variety of Asian made products, that are NOT equal in effectiveness.

Thanks for all of the help. I am now able to see across the entire pool all the way to the bottom. I have ordered the filters and will be ordering the test kits next week. We have had a lot of rain in the past week so I have been vacuuming using the siphon out onto the ground since my current filters will not trap the fine debris.

My pool is still not as clear as I would like it right now. Should I keep the FC levels high another couple days or should I let it go back to normal and see if the filters will fix it when they come in?

If your weather is cloudy, so you don't lose much chlorine to the sunlight, keep it high.

Otherwise, if you can only measure to 5 ppm, let it drop just below 5, and then re-dose to take it to near 10 ppm, till you have a kit, and can manage it more accurately.

How do you use the TSP? I have 2 c400 cartridges that were at 8psi and now are at 20 psi even after I rinse them.