Quote Originally Posted by Watermom View Post
In addition to working on your pH and TA, you need to get some chlorine in there or you are gonna have a GREEN pool with low pH and TA!

Your CYA is perfect at 50 so don't use any more tabs or any more dichlor shock. (I'm assuming it is dichlor shock; correct me if I am wrong.) Trichlor and Dichlor both contain CYA and you don't want yours to go any higher. In addition, both are acidic and will lower your pH so that is another reason not to use them.

Just use plain, unscented household bleach for your source of chlorine. It will not add CYA and will do a great job of sanitizing your water. With a CYA of 50, you need to keep your chlorine level between 3-6 all the time or risk an algae bloom. It is much easier to keep algae away than it is to get rid of it once you have it. Add enough bleach to get the cl up to 6 ASAP. Then, test this evening and add enough bleach to take it back up to 6. Do this every evening when you test. Take the cl back up to 6. In a 4000 gallon pool, each cup of bleach will add just a little under 1ppm of chlorine. Use that as a reference to help you figure out how much bleach to add each evening.

By the way, you can be working on all of these things at the same time. It is just fine to add bleach right after you add Borax, baking soda, washing soda or pH-up -- whichever you are using.
I am going to the store in a little bit and going to pick up some bleach (I saw somewhere else something about %6 bleach, does this matter, or just as long as it unscented household bleach?). About an hr ago I added about 12oz pH up..just checked again and still unchanged. Is an hr too quick for it to show a difference, or how long should I wait in between checking it?