Iron stains removed with Natural Chemistry Stain Free returned

[jsherville]

Hi! This is my first post here.

I’ve gotten a lot of great tips that have helped us in our transition to taking care of our pool ourselves. We are currently in the process of removing iron stains from the pool. We used the natural chemistry stain free suggested by our local pool store and it worked wonderfully. We followed all the instructions. Then we started noticing some algae growth and the water was still very cloudy. We brought a water sample in to the pool store and were instructed to add a gallon of muriatic acid for high pH and alkalinity, 7 oz. algaecide, 6 more oz. super blue, and to put 3 chlorine tablets in the skimmer.

A couple hours later the stains started to show up again.

Any advice is welcomed and appreciated! Thank you

[PoolDoc]

Wow! I'm on a roll, tonight. Lot's of answers that won't make people happy.

Sorry, but . . .

1. None of the "metal removal" products remove metals from your POOL! Instead, they just move metals from the stains, back into the pool water, where it was before.

2. Natural Chemistry Stain Free is just citric acid . . . and it is NOT chlorine compatible. If you have a decent chlorine level in the pool, you do NOT have any citric acid left! And, once the citric acid is gone, the dissolved metals tend to revert to the form that stains pools!

3. But in the same what the chlorine destroys citric acid, so citric acid destroys chlorine. It sounds like initially, the citric acid 'won', leaving you with a STAIN FREE and CHLORINE FREE pool. The cloudiness and algae are quite likely the result of the missing chlorine.

4. There's a whole PoolForum section here on metals and stains. There are several FAQs and sticky posts.

5. The information posted on stain removal works for ME and for a few experienced pool owners. I haven't found that it works well for most people, probably because it is a complex long-term process that requires ongoing and exacting attention.

[PoolDoc]

[ Upgraded membership; moved thread to "Stains" section <= you may need to log out and back in, before you can see everything.