You need to read up on our BBB system--Bleach, Borax and Baking Soda. Your pool is small so bleach is the easiest way to get your chlorine up. Your algaecide, unless it's Polyquat (Poly something-something 60% and nothing else) is worse than useless. Borax is the cheapest and yet the best way to raise your pH. 20 Mule Team Borax from the supermarket. But without a full set of test results I can only guess what you need to do.

But what you really need is two things: 1) Knowledge, which is free and is freely available her and at our sister site, PoolSolutions.com, where you can read and learn to care for your pools. and 2) A proper test kit. We recommend the Taylor K-2006 or K-2006C kits (same but the C has more chemical--"reagents"). For a cheaper, stop-gap alternative, WalMart sells the HTH 6-way drop test kit, which is pretty good. Guess strips are not recommended.