Quote Originally Posted by barma16 View Post
Thanks for the encouragement I don't mean to be pedantic (and feel free to call me a pompous ass if I am - my boss does, regularly!), but when you say kill it "and then" filter it, do you mean once it's all dead, or filter as I go?

My filter currently clogs in minutes rather than hours, even after stripping it down, hosing the fingers clean, and adding minimal DE - I understood from Ben's earlier post here that live algae will clog a DE filter very quickly, so I've just been recirculating while I try to kill it all off; planning to start running it through the filter when most of it is dead. Water replacement is not a problem, so running the dead stuff to waste is an appealing alternative to back-washing every half an hour!
Hey if you can't filter yet then you can't filter. But you definitely have to keep circulating your water. If I had to break down and clean a DE filter every hour, I'd be at my wits end. Don't abandon trying to filter but if it has to be one or the other, keep it on recirculate. If you stay on top of the chlorine you'll be able to run the filter for longer periods once you kill all the algae. After you filter the dead stuff that's suspended in the water you will be able see the stuff that fell to the bottom.

Another thing--the word SHOCK is meaningless. Chlorine is chlorine. It's the amount you put in that determines if you're shocking or not. As they say on this great forum, "shock is not a noun, it's a verb."