Hi, and welcome to the forum!

First off, how are you testing? I suspect you're using strips, which are not really reliable and not accurate enough to clean up a mess. The reason that's important is that in order to kill the algae, you need to raise your chlorine level to "shock" level, and how high that is will depend on your CYA. So....if your CYA is actually 30 ppm, then you need to raise your chlorine to at least 15 ppm and hold it there. If your CYA is 20 or less, then you need to get your chlorine to 12 ppm and maintain that. WalMart sells a 6-way drop kit by hth that would work for now--it runs around $20. My WalMart still has some, but you'll have to check and see if they're available in your area.

So,...the first thing you need to do is fix your pH, since pH readings are not accurate with chlorine levels above 10 ppm or so. Use 20-Mule Team Borax to raise your pH instead of baking soda--baking soda will raise your TA, but you don't need to worry about that. Your TA will come up some when you get the pH up where it needs to be, which is in the 7.0-7.8 range. Anything below 7.0 is acidic and can damage your liner. And most tests don't read pH lower than 6.8, so your 6.8 could actually mean "6.8 or LOWER". It might take quite a bit of Borax to raise it, but you'll have to dose a little at a time and see how it goes. I would start with about 1/2 box, poured very slowly into the skimmer, breaking up clumps. Give it a couple of hours to distribute, then test and add more if necessary until you see your pH rising.


Once you get the pH fixed, then you need to raise your chlorine levels to the shock level I talked about earlier. If you can tell me the height of the water level in your pool I can figure your volume, but if you know it, that would help too--once I know that I can give you some guidelines on the amount of bleach to add. Once you attain shock level, you need to maintain it as consistently as possible by testing and adding more chlorine as necessary to keep it high...the more consistent you are about this, the faster the pool will clear.

Keep the pump running 24/7, backwashing the filter when the pressure rises by 6 psi or so (this will probably be pretty frequent during the cleanup), and brush the pool daily, preferably after a bleach addition to loosen as much algae as you can.

It will take some patience and alot of bleach, but it will clear!