Newbie/1st post: Black cloudy water & leaving out of town in 2 days.... Help!

[kelemvor]

Algae doesn't really hurt you, it's just considered unsightly by most. Algae occurs naturally in lakes, rivers, and oceans. Lack of proper sanitation can leave your pool full of germs and bacteria that CAN hurt you though. However, what kills the bacteria also kills the algae as far as I know so....

As far as those trichlor granules, I would stop using them immediately. They add CYA to your water and I'm going to hazard a guess that your CYA is high if that's all you've been using for years. Overly high CYA renders chlorine ineffective.

http://poolsolutions.com/gd/avoiding...ing-pools.html

[CarlD]

To continue: "Stabilized Chlorine" makes you think it's "different" kind of chlorine from bleach. It's not. Chlorine is chlorine. But as Tri-chlor dissolves, it releases Cyanuric/Isocyanuric Acid (aka, CYA), which is chlorine stabilizer. You can get the same effect by adding bleach and adding granulated stabilizer/CYA. Tri-chlor is also very acidic and can lower your pH quickly.

While algae IS harmless (as kelemvor points out), it is the canary in the coal mine that your chlorine level is too low to kill the harmful stuff. Further, your chlorine is spent killing the algae and isn't available for the bad stuff. So killing algae is necessary to keep enough chlorine to kill bacteria and viruses.