Glad you got it sorted out one way or another.

For people searching and reading the thread, I'll just chime in:

When DE is getting into MY pool it has ALWAYS been one of two things:
1- A torn grid
2- A torn grid.



And the tears can be TINY TINY TINY. Just the diameter of a pencil in the right place is plenty big enough to get DE into the pool enough to cloud it up.

I usually find tears:
Where the Rib-Ends are
At the bottom of the grid feed pipe
Stitched seams torn.