Quote Originally Posted by River Gronkowitz View Post
Is it normal to take this long to filter out all of the dead algae, or could there possibly be a problem with the filter? Would I need to consider changing the sand in the filter or maybe adding DE to it?
I'm going with, "there's a problem with the filter".

The two most common problems are (1) missing sand, blown out during backwash via oversize pool pump and (2) coarse non-filter sand, sold by pool stores trying increase their margin.

If you post your pump and filter make/model, we can probably tell if it's likely you've blown out sand when you've been backwashing. This is more common on AG pools, but it happens on IG pools as well.

But, either one of these problems will make clean up very slow. The DE test Janet described is also diagnostic: if you put DE in, and it blows back out, you DEFINITELY have filter problems.