As one who started with an Intex donut and moved to a full-sized pool it was for me an excellent training experience. When I got my FantaSea I was already pretty good at keeping my Intex pristine. That was a 15' round. Since now the 15' donuts are SO cheap (even Toy'r'Us sells them) I don't see why you don't upgrade.

BTW, when your pH was 8 and your CYA=0, that's a GREAT time to use Tri-chlor tabs, albeit without copper, as they add CYA and lower pH, while maintaining fairly consistent FC levels.

The hardest part about small pools is getting the right amounts of stuff in without over-doing it. If your pool is about 1000 gallons, then you can use the Rule of Thumb calculation of chlorine--and increase or divide by 10 as needed:
1 Gallon of 6% Bleach adds 6ppm of FC to 10,000 gallons.
5.25% adds 5.25 ppm, 12% adds 12ppm.
Now with your 1,000 gallon pool, you use 1/10 of a gallon to get the same effect.

Or...1 quart of 6% would add about 15ppm (roughly) to your 1000 gallons. (15= 1/4 of 6*10 )