ROFL--you actually made me laugh out loud and my kids are looking at me like I'm crazy.....
I was wondering how it was going, hoping your abscence from here was because you were busy enjoying your pool!! Any pre-filtering you're going to do will certainly never hurt. Don't have any experience with the pre-filters, but remember that high chlorine causes the iron to drop out of solution, so if there's a way to run the hose past a dose of chlorine (like maybe a trichlor tab?) just before it hits the filter, you might be more successful at filtering it out. (Remember when you just started this, that's why you put the chlorine source in at the skimmer--so the iron would fall out onto the filter).

Congratulations on a job well done!!

Janet