There have been ALOT of poeple on this forum this year suffering huge chlorine demand at opening - the warm winter / spring may very well be a contributor.

The short of it is that there are bacteria that can thrive in an unsanitized (closed) pool that convert Cyanuric acid to amonia or urea. These bacteria by products will be cleared by chlorine but it will take alot of chlorine.

Do you know what your Cyanuric Acid (CYA) level was before closing?

Do you know what chemicals are in Aqua Blast shock? Tell us if you can.

You can't trust the test strips. They are unreliable and potentially misleading. The best thing you can do to free yourself, take charge, and clean up your pool is to buy a Taylor K-2006 test kit (or the K-2006C - larger quantities). Please see How-to-Get-the-Right-Testkits-for-your-Pool. While waiting for the K-2006, pick up a cheap OTO-phenol red test kit wall mart probably has 'em. Some wall marts have the "HTH 6-way test kit" pick that up if you see it.

The people here will help you take control of your pool, but, if you end up bouncing between the advice here and the pool store or pool service, your posts will get less attention.

For now, pick up the OTO (or HTH 6-way from wall mart) and alot of plain, unscented generic 6% bleach. You'll need seven gallons to get to a shock value of 12ppm from your present 0ppm. Put that in as soon as you can, let it mix for a couple hours measure again. You need to bring the chlorine up to shock level and keep it there until the CC (combined chlorine) clears.