Let me add my welcome to you--we're glad to have you here!

One more question--is your pool surface liner, or concrete/plaster/gunite?

If you used 17 drops for the TA test to get a permanent color change, then your TA is really 170. In a vinyl pool, it's not a big deal, but since your pH is also high you can take care of them both at once by adding muriatic acid to drop both the TA and pH (but only drop the pH to the low 7 range--you don't want to get to the 6 range), then aerate your water to raise the pH back up while leaving the TA low. You can read more about that in the Alkalinity forum--the process for ratcheting it down is stickied at the top of the forum.

Stabilizer is the same as CYA, often labeled at the store as " balancer" or "conditioner". It is important in the pool because that's what protects your chlorine from the sun, so it's left in the pool to fight "stuff". Your current CYA level is what will determine how high you need to raise your chlorine to get rid of the algae, so if you could test for that and post it, that will help us help you eliminate the algae problem. If you need to raise it, you can buy it separately at WalMart, or you can use the tabs in an inline chlorinator. The ingredient on these tabs should be trichloro........something. Basically that's a tab of chlorine with stabilizer built in. They are bad about driving your pH down, though, so if you use them to chlorinate with, keep a close eye on your CYA and your pH.

Hope this helps!

Janet