My mustard algae battle and victory

[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

[Pamsel]

Thanks everyone for your support and good wishes!

Our vinyl liner is old and probably will need to be replaced next year - it's starting to pull away from the side and getting some cracks around the upper edge. (We're limping it along with simple repairs as long as we can.) So I was more concerned about killing algae than bleaching the liner. I do think it faded some, but it was already somewhat faded - the edges where the side meets the bottom are quite a bit darker. But it still has enough color to give the pool a nice light blue color and that's a whole lot prettier than green!

I started out with no CYA but now it's around 40 - have not checked it since last week.

[ivyleager]

I started out with no CYA but now it's around 40 - have not checked it since last week.

Okay, was it zero at last seasons closing? I'm wondering if your algae bloom decomposed all of your CYA.

CaryB

[Pamsel]

To be honest, I never heard of CYA until I found this board a few weeks ago. I have no idea what it was at close, but I used the pucks in my chlorinator all last season, so it could have been high. I know I had a high chlorine demand last summer and I had algae growing in August. I really didn't know didly-squat about my pool and how to properly care for it before finding this forum, so didn't know how to kill the algae either. I think we used the copper algaecide before closing, but if I remember correctly, it was not clear when we closed it. The "pool guys" who closed it said it was not a problem. I think that all contributed to the big problem I had this spring.