My follow up! My account must have seemed rather confusing . Here is a simple explanation.
We had a pool leak in the liner, all tests pointed to a liner leak. We were losing 1 inch every 18 hours . we searched for a week using any means to locate the leak. At a last resort my wife and I decided to put new bigger ( 4 inch) patches over to smaller patches we had from years ago. They were both about 3 ft down from an accident I caused 5 years ago. We had dye tested these patches with red food color (takes about 3 days to wear off your hands, lol) and did not see a leak. This morning checked water level and it did not drop overnight. My conclusion is that finding a leak with dye is harder than you think! I'm hoping we were lucky enough to find it.
Now my question is this .How low can the water be left for over the winter? Its about 2 inches below the return eyeballs.