Green Pool Water tried everything Please Help

[VickiP]

Sorry I have a sand filter and 18,000 gallons of water

[Watermom]

VickiP --- I'm going to move your thread into the "algae" section of the forum. This Forum Q & A section is for questions about how to use the forum rather than advice on how to clear a pool. By the way, welcome!

[Watermom]

Don't add anything else at this point. If you have metal in your water, shocking causes it to fall out of suspension. I'm going to ask Marie to look at this thread for you. She is our "go to" on pools with metal issues.

And, stay out of that pool store! Not only are they emptying your wallet needlessly, but they are also giving you bad advice.

[VickiP]

Thanks so much, I will wait to hear. They did check the metal again it is no iron and very very low copper reading. Thanks again.

[CarlD]

That last is good news.

Pool stores complicate stuff for two reasons: 1) to sell you lots more stuff 2) they have no idea what REALLY works and what does not.

You are going to need to follow some basics to get your pool clean, but first you will need to get us all these numbers:
FC
CC or TC
pH
T/A
CH
CYA

You've given us some of them. You can ask the pool store to test your water and get us those numbers and say something like "I just want to see how your advice is working" and DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM!

We have some sections on dealing with algae. You should read them.

You'll need to keep chlorine levels high, clean all the detritus from your pool, vacuum to waste once a day. Brush the walls and bottom once a day, and check and keep your chlorine up 2 to 3x / day.

You'll also need lots of POPP--Pool Owner Patience and Persistence.

[VickiP]

HI,
I have the print out from the pool store from yesterday
FC (free chlorine) 7
TC (total Chlorine) 7
PH 7.6
T/A (Tot Alkalinity) 114
CH ??? dont see it on the list what is it
CYA 30
TDS 700
Total Hardness 100

We did add the 4 bags of shock and 5 (96 oz) of bleach today. We scrubbed the walls and should we vacuum to waste today too? Still same color of green. Also I did add last week a bottle of algeacide and yesterday the bottle of banish.
Thanks for the help

[VickiP]

We just opened up our sand filter because is seemed to bog down every once in a while. We replace it years ago and we found lots of pieces of pine needles and chunks of leaves it was gross. So we are going to empty it and clean out the canister and get new sand tomorrow. Do you think this could be a problem too?

[aylad]

CH ??? dont see it on the list what is it ....
Total Hardness 100

CH means calcium hardness, which doesn't apply to a vinyl pool, as long as it's not over 300 or so. Yours is fine, despite what the pool store will tell you....just don't buy anything else from them and stick with what Watermom and Mbar are telling you. They've helped clear up more pool problems in a week or two than you'll see in a lifetime, and Mbar is THE resident expert on metal problems (besides Ben, of course)!!

Janet