Carl- I've been changing the filter weekly. They were available and cheap enough this year to just replace rather than try to clean. Might be that the pump is a little oversized... it's a discontinued Model 51, which I believe pumps 2000 gph in a 5500 gal. pool. If the sediment gets stirred up, it will pick up some in the filter, but there seems to be a lot that passes on through and dumps by the return. We had bad algae when we opened that I got cleared up thanks to this wonderful website. Had a lot of residue left from that, plus we have a caliche driveway running about 5 feet in front of the pool and have been in a pretty severe drought here in Texas. There's dust everywhere, including in the pool. I did try the cotton balls in the bag... that picked up some extra stuff. But based on your recommendation in another post, I went ahead and splurged on the pool devil & bought the extra fine bag, plus socks to fit into that. It picked everything up. The first time I used it, the bag was almost full of tan sludge... globs of it. I couldn't believe it got it all out. Now, once a week does it and it doesn't take very long. I'm hoping to move on up in a year or two to a nice above-ground and hopefully can use the devil on that one too. An automatic cleaner would be nice... but for now, I enjoy getting it the pool and vacuuming... beats vacuuming the house!

Lori