I believe I have this sorted out for the most part now. Seems as tho I was making quite a newbie mistake. The vacuum w/the same debris catcher bag has been in the pool since we bought the house a week ago. After adding the shock dosage earlier this afternoon, I realized this probably shouldn't be in there especially with that bag full of debris.

Well lo and behold, I turned off the pump then disconnected and removed the vacuum from the pool. I finally saw a current in the water! Tested the water after about 20 mins and got a reading between 12-15ppm! Well after feeling some relief and needing to eat, I got lunch and returned to walmart to buy more bleach.

Returned home, tested the water at about 345 pm, and got a FC reading of 3 ppm. Progress! Since I dont have internet at the house yet, I used calculations previously printed the from poolcalculator.com based on raising the 3 ppm to 12 ppm. It called for 3 gals 3 quarts. I added it, tested the level at 410 pm, and got a reading of 15 ppm, woohoo!

Im going to test the pool water tonight when its getting dark and make the necessary adjustments. Couple of questions for you guys and gals:

1) For clarity purposes, based on a pool size of approx. 25000 gals, 1 gallon of 6% bleach will raise it by how many ppm?

2) I tested my Ph a couple times today and got readings of 7.0. I believe I need to raise this to 7.5-7.6. The above listed calculator states I should add 11 lb of borax by weight. Is that accurate?

3) I'll test for the CYA and post the results. Would this be a good price for it? http://www.lowes.com/pd_86401-1772-0...ine&facetInfo=

4) Getting ahead of myself (hopefully only slightly), once the pool reaches the point where it loses 1ppm or less overnight, what are the next steps?