Glad it seems to be improving. A raise to 12 psi is fine. You are probably just catching stuff in the filter which is good!

As far as a cleaner --- you want to be very careful about putting any type of cleaners in your pool. It can mess up your chemistry and also give you a giant bubble bath if you aren't careful! I sometimes will use a little baking soda on a rag when I need to clean the vinyl. As long as you don't you use boxes worth to clean with, the baking soda isn't going to mess up the chemistry any.