Intro and a Question (too much algae guard)

Hello all,

I just got my first pool up. I live in Nebraska and am a little tired of this heat so I thought I needed a pool! Being a newbie to pools, I just made a mistake adding algae guard to my pool.

My pool holds 4,500 gallons. I have the "HTH Super algae guard" which was the weaker of the two algae guards they had at Wal-Mart. In my haste to get my pool ready, I made a math error and added far too much. It says to use 4 ounces for 10,000, and I made a mistake and read it as 4 ounces for every 1,000 gallons. So, instead of adding 2 ounces like I should have, I added 16 ounces (yeah, go ahead and laugh at my idiocy :) )

So, my question is, what should I do? Is it safe to swim anyway? Should I wait a day? A week? Drain it partially and refill it? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You're probably okay, just might see a little foaming. The algaeguard in itself won't hurt you, but may use up your chlorine faster than normal as it breaks the stuff down. If you have chlorine in the pool, and your pH is between 7.0-8.0, and your water is clear, I would go ahead and swim. Can you post a set of test numbers (drop-based kit, no strips!) for us to look at?

Chlorine is the best "algae guard" you can find--no need for extra algaecides except in very isolated cases--and even then, polyquat 60 is the only one that we recommend you put in your pool.

Welcome to the forum!