My mustard algae battle and victory

[haze_1956]

Outstanding Pam !!!!

Congratulations !!!!


And I have a question for you, why did you add the polyquat?

.

[Rangeball]

this-



pretty much sums it all up and makes it worthwhile, I bet

Good Job!

[Pamsel]

Haze,

I added the Polyquat because Ben told me to. He saw that I wasn't getting results so told me to do the Polyquat and then the high CL shock regimen. I didn't ask him why - I just did it.

[Karin]

Pamsel, I really identified with you; I had no idea what yellow algae looked like either. I assumed it would be clumps of yellow slime hanging on the side of the pool....wrong. Mine looked like brown dirt/dust had blown into the pool and clouds of it could be stirred up everytime I used the brush on it. My pool never got quite as dramatic as yours though.

I sent my ancient Kreepy pool boy to clean it up daily and he did---but it was always back the next day. I wasted a lot of time trying to clean that stuff up before I realized I had to KILL IT!!first.

I used liquid laundry bleach too. I wonder if using that will stain a pool or if the yellow algae leaves stains behind?

Now I am a vigilante; I give every suspicious speck a threatening look...

[Pamsel]

Karen, I do have some staining, but I think it's from the high iron content in my fill water, rather than from the algae. I can't be sure, but I don't think the algae leaves stains.

[brent.roberts]

Congratulations on you persistance.

On another thread with another soul that had a stubborn case I suggested shocking as soon as the sun was off the pool in the afternoon and checking again just a few hours later ... before going to be.

I reasoned that if the pool is heavily loaded with organics there would be a very fast drop in the FC levels very shortly after the shock dose, and that by morning the levels had dropped off enough that things were growing again.

Fortunately, I have never had a visitation from a stubborn algae and could not test the idea, but your case and the method you finally got to, lend some support to this idea. I am thinking that we might need to fine tune the suggested method used to fight an algae bloom to short cycle the retesting and raising the FC levels compared to the proceedure that has been generally suggested.

1) find the break point needed after testing CYA etc and use bleach calc to get the right does.
2) test withing a few minutes of adding to make sure you got it right.
3) test again withing a couple hours to see how fast it is dropping and repeat the process. The faster the retest and re-load to shock levels the faster the algae will be killed.
4) keep it up until the FC levels show little change in retesting after sunset to take sun breakdown out of the equation.

Your experience may have been a turning point in the methods we use.

[ivyleager]

Pam,

Kudos to your persistence. A lot of folks here were rooting for you.

I noticed you have a vinyl liner....did the VERY high chlorine level bleach out or do any other damage to the liner?

Also, what was your CYA prior to this algae problem and what is it now?

CaryB