Mustard Algae

[rwhitsel]

I have a 24 foot round above ground pool. Bought it used. Have had it about 5 years now. Every year I open it, my pool store has me shocking with like 14 bags of shock and hundreds of dollars worth of chemicals. I have a terrible algae problem. This year, I used one bottle of Bioguard Banish and 2 bags of shock. It worked okay but I can still see a yellow/green tint to the water. Have had it open for 2 weeks now and still not crystal clear. I added Borax last night to get levels up but the sticks show no free chlorine. The sticks never show any free chlorine. My pool store says it is cause the algae is eating it all up. How do I get rid of this algae?

[PoolDoc]

Hi Whit;

24 round -- about 12,000 gallons, right? If so, a gallon of 6% household bleach will add about 6 ppm of chlorine. Add 2 each evening, till you get your pool straightened out.

#1 - For now, dose with bleach nightly. Add bleach no earlier than 2 hours before sunset.
#2 - Get a cheap OTO/phenol red kit and start testing with it. In particular we need readings 1 hour after adding bleach and again in the AM, no later than 2 hours after sunrise.
#3 - Get your pool store to test your pool for stabilizer and report the results here. Return any unopened chemicals UNLESS you have no stabilizer. In that case, keep the stabilizer.
#4 - If you're not doing so already, run your filter 24/7 till you are all cleaned up.

Ok, just checked out Banish -- it's just a 3% copper algaecide, which means you've got copper in the pool water that will cause green hair and stains. (Bet they didn't tell you that, when they sold you that product, did they?)

This is one of those cases where we could do it faster if you hadn't already been "pool-stored", to use Carl's term.

Since you have copper in the pool, USE ONLY 1/2 GALLON DOSES OF BLEACH, NOT THE 2 GALLON DOSE ABOVE!!

The trick here is to keep the algae from getting worse, while avoiding staining, as we wait for test results. So . . . add another 1/2 gallon dose each time the chlorine level goes below 1 ppm.

REMOVE ANY STICKS OR OTHER "FEEDER" PRODUCTS from their holder and THEN add the bleach via your skimmer.

Also, purchase a couple of quarts of polyquat (see page here:
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/polyquat.html

Following dosing instructions faithfully. Unlike other algaecides, this product won't make things worse, while you get the copper out of the pool. With the copper present, we can't raise the chlorine high enough to take care of your algae, so we need something else.

Meanwhile, see if you can get your pool store to do a complete set of tests on your pool water. If you can, report the numbers here.

Also, if you want to avoid problems in the future, you'll need to switch to doing some or all of your testing yourself. The OTO-phenol red kit is helpful and immediately available, but you'll need more than that. The Taylor K2006 or 2006C (Amazon links below) is the cheapest adequate kit available.

Let us know how it goes; report back with any changes.

Good luck!

Ben