Thanks Carl!

I'll buy that test kit as soon as possible. I'm pretty sure I'm using the Trichlor. according to the test strips the stabilizer and alkalinity are the only things low.

the pool is 18x36 but it has an 8 foot deep end and a 4 foot shallow end. Not exactly sure how quickly it slopes since I've never been in there.

As far as the sand filter goes, the filter seems to be leaking slightly from the top, the pressure gauge when we bought the house was completely missing and when we closed on it there was a new one that was fixed to the top of the filter with some kind of apoxy putty. we've had literally 3 or 4 pool companies inspect the pool and tell us what we should do/need to do, only one said that we should probably get a new sand filter. However, all of them said that the pool is old and at the "end of it's life" not sure what that exactly means.

my water is as of today a light aqua color and slightly cloudy. I've been running the pool cleaner 5 or 6 times in the last 3 days .. I've started with a bag insert to capture the big debris and am now using the 2 micron filters. hopefully the cloudiness will go away soon. it does look noticeably better.