HELP!! Greenish/brownish pool...just filled it!

Ok, I'm a pretty new pool owner, so no laughing at me ok :p


We have one of those soft-sided pools, the kind you buy at WalMart. It's about 5,600 gallons.

We added the water over the last few days, and it was finally full last night. Nice, clean, crystal clear water. No debris in it either. So I tested PH and stuff, all ok. PH is 7.4, Alkalinity is 80. I use those test strips from Wal mart, not good I know. Then I added the initial shock treatment. It turned a little green last night (it did last year too everytime we shocked it) but we woke up this morning to it REALLy gross. Like old, murky swamp water!

Anyone know what possibly could be causing that? Last year we bought some metal-remover chemical for it, and it worked, but turned the water cloudy. I think I may try that again...but I'm going to need a TON of it this time, lol.

Do you think it's algae or maybe metal? What can I do to fix it? It's not at all possible to empty and refill the thing, like someone else told me I should do. :(

Metals usually appear after you shock the pool from the high chlorine levels. If in doubt- take a sample to the pool store and have it tested for iron and copper.

Gee my oldest daughter is twinsplusone too!!! :-)

Anyway... I have the same type of pool and this happens to me every single year to one degree or another.

It's rust. :-) Your water must have a high iron content and when you add the chlorine it causes the iron in the water to rust. My kids will swim in this if desperate enough. ;-)
Just wear old stuff as the rust stains light fabrics.

You need to add something WHILE filling it and before you add all that chlorine to it. Don't ask me what to add... came to the forum looking for that answer before I set my pool up this year!!! ;-)

So what to do now??? Rinse your filter OFTEN( a few times a day!!) and wait. :-)
It will filter out, but it's takes a few DAYS!!! Depending on the size of your pool. My smaller pool took about a week, my larger pool, about 2 weeks. I set up my small filter with the larger one so it filters faster.

Hopefully someone will have a better solution, but just know if all else fails, time and filtering will take care of it and it's not really 'dirty' water- just rusty. ;-)

You will want to buy another filter too as filtering all that rust out is going to do in the one you have now.

Carol in IL