calcium hardness/ metal control new to me, do I need them

[mackeeg]

No I didn't buy it. Thanks for the input I had no idea and thought I would ask here first. Thanks

[mbar]

You do need some calcium in a fiberglass pool, but I wouldn't add that much. You can just keep what you have, I usually keep my calcium at around l50 - 200. I usually keep my ph between 7.2 and 7.4. Raise your alkalinity to about 80, the way CarlD says. Don't worry about tds. Carl is right with a cya of 80, you need a minimum of 5ppms chlorine, and a max of 10ppms and to shock you need 20ppms. So you may not want to use any chorine pucks (trichlor), because that will add cya. You can use calhypo - it will add calcium to your water with it. Bleach won't add anything but salt - which won't do anything to your pool. If you don't have any stains, you don't need any metal out. If you do see some staining, then you need to use something that sequesters metals. Feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

[karenib]

My DH didn't want to wait,he wants to go swimming tomorrow and the guy said not to go in the water until the ph is higher. So he added 7lbs of alkalinity increaser only. I'll have to see if I can find a pool store to run a test tomorrow or monday to check my numbers again. We didn't add anything else.

just a note, the water is crystal clear and there were no stains on the walls...so we didn't have any problems - we just had the water tested to check the TA and ph.

[mbar]

That's fine. You should have the alkalinity between 80 - 100. Just don't add the calcium. You do have to add more chlorine - get it up in to around 8ppms, this way when people start to swim you won't go below 5. After a couple of hours of adding the alkalinity up check your numbers.

[karenib]

Thanks Marie. Do you think I should hold on to the bottle of metal control in case I do get staining. The rest of the chemicals are going back to the store

Karen

[mbar]

Yes, I would just hold on to the metal control until you see some stains forming. If you see a stain starting, then take the ph down to 7. - 7.2, and add the metal control. It should lift the stain off.

[Watermom]

My DH didn't want to wait,he wants to go swimming tomorrow and the guy said not to go in the water until the ph is higher. So he added 7lbs of alkalinity increaser only.

Karen - You said you were trying to raise ph so you added alkalinity increaser. Ph and alk are not the same thing. You raise ph by adding Borax. You raise alk by adding baking soda. If your alk was already 90, then I hope adding the 7 lbs. of alk increaser doesn't raise your alk too much.