non-chlorine sanitizer

[pgk in new mexico]

I am a proud owner of a new Intex easy set up pool which is now full of awful brown water. Based on what I have read the problem is that my well water and chlorine don't agree. Is there not an alternative to chlorine in order to avoid the brown water effect? I do not have access to another water source. Thanks for any guidance that can be offered.

[chem geek]

You can use chlorine, but would need to either sequester or remove the metals in the water first. You can use a metal sequestrant product such as Jack's Magic Pink Stuff ($28 which is enough for 10,000 gallons). Another alternative is to remove the iron from the water during filling of the pool since it's relatively small in volume using a product such as Metal Trap (though it's not cheap -- $86 for a 10,000 gallon pool, but for your likely smaller pool you should be able to use this for more then one fill). There are also ways of forcing iron to come out in your filter, but that's for regular pools with sand filters and I don't think would work well for yours which likely has a weak pump with poor circulation and a small cartridge filter.

[pgk in new mexico]

I had already put in 3 times the recommended amount of Metal Free by Natural Chemistry 4 days before adding the chlorine (had a bit of trouble getting the alkalinity down and then getting the PH up). Can one put in too much sequestrant or is Metal Fee a poor product?

[PoolDoc]

Metal Free is EDTA, a non-chlorine stable sequestrant. Not something I'd recommend for regular use in a chlorinated pool!

However, the solution to your problem is some what complicated. Here's a thread that covers it in some detail:

Need-help-with-metal-remover-products