Chlorine not holding, cloudy

[sabres07]

I have an 18,000 gallon inground liner pool. I run a 3/4 hp cartridge style filter. Last fall I had a CYA reading of about 30. No CYA reading this spring. I openned the pool last week and it was green and slimy. I added 5 lbs of granular shock and it turned mostly blue but cloudy within about one day. I had the water tested at the pool store and ph was low. I used soda ash to raise it. I now have the ph at 7.4 or so, the pool is cloudy but blue and I am not registering any chlorine. In the week the pool has been open, I have added approx. 20 lbs of granular shock. Still no chlorine reading on my test strips or at the pool store when they test the water. My numbers are as follows: TA 100, CYA 30, Calcium hardness 350, FC 0. This evening I added 3 gallons of bleach and took a test strip reading 30 minutes later and it still showed no chlorine. I think these algae blooms are tough this year! After reading this forum, I think I may have to chlorinate with bleach excessively to overcome amonia and algae in my water. Any thoughts about how much bleach I will need to overcome this issue?

[aylad]

If the issue is ammonia, the answer is....a LOT! I don't mean to sound like a smart-aleck, but there's no way to know exactly how much. However...I'm suspicious that your chlorine may be holding better than you think...usually, high levels of chlorine will simply bleach out the test strips, which is why we don't rely on them at all and strongly advocate drop-based testing. If you have an OTO kit, (red and yellow drops for pH and chlorine), test with that and see if the chlorine color actually turns dark yellow to orange. If so, then you simply have too much chlorine for your "guess strips" to read.