Hi Sherrie
I'm new here this year too. They are really busy with so many of us at the same time. I know the answer to your question so I wanted to help out in case it takes a while for them to circle back to you.

Your drop count for your alkalinity stopped at 4. That's the number you use. The sample is green at first. Dark pink is a color change, period. The fact that it didn't get "redder" with 8 more drops attests to that. I don't believe we're to discern between shades within a color which is why the drop test kit is so much better. Dark pink is in the Red family....green is not. Alkalinity is the easy one of the 5 tests!

I'm having the same problem with Calcium Hardness. My indicator turns the sample purple rather than red. Absolutely half-way between red and blue. The titrant is to be added until the "red" turns to blue. Purple is part of both families. So I continue until there is a definite change in the initial color I get. (basically more of a blue-purple rather than a red-purple.) That makes CH (for me) the hardest test. Luckily, it has a wide range of acceptable levels and with a liner, you have an even higher range.

Another thing you should know....don't be surprised when you have a sparkly, shiny, beautifully clean pool, and your chlorine still disappears rapidly! That's where I'm at now. There's still "goo" in my pool even though you can't see it. We've added over 130 ppm of FC to our pool in the last two weeks and it still can't maintain FC over 1.5 ppm. We added 2 gallons of 12.5% chlorine again last night and this morning we only had a TC of about 9 or 10 and an FC of 1.5 - 2.0. Just wanted to prepare you should that happen to you.

I'm 3/4 (I think) of the way done with the process you are starting. I had to get my alkalinity down from 250+ in addition to getting rid of the ammonia. Follow the forum's advice to the letter; everything works exactly as they lay it out. Good Luck!!