Thanks for the post...I had not recieved any more replies on this thread in awhile and thought maybe people had considered it dead and stopped looking at it..here is a copy of the new day from the other post..Thanks again...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
added HTH Ph minus because the Ph was testing at 8.4 or above on my strips.

On saturday morning the water no longer looked brown but now looked green and I could see to the bottom of the pool. I continued to clean the cartridge filter 2-3 times per day and it was always orange and rusty looking. When I scooped water out in a bottle for a sample it looked clear!?

I took a sample of the water in to the pool place and got the following numbers:
Free Chlorine:0
Cya: 0
Total hardenss: 279
Ph: 7.5
Total alkalinity: 369
iron 1.5 ppm
Salt 1700

The pool place told me the iron may continue to decrease over the next few days with the metal control only being added the day before. They also advised me to wait a while longer on adding any chlorine. They said the biggest thing I needed to do was lower the alkalinity and they advised using muratic acid. 1/4 gallon then 1/4 gallon 4 hours later. If still high add more the next day up to another 1/2 gallon. Based on my readings on here I realized i would need to aerate to keep the Ph from dropping too much. My return valve from the filter/pump is angled slightly upward and the total water level for the pool is slightly low so water is splashing quite a bit which I think is doing the job of aeration?

Well at this point I have added 3/4 gallons of muratic acid and the pool still loooks greenish but mostly clear (meaning I can see the bottom of the pool). When I test using test strips the Ph still looks to be around 7.2 and the alkalinity looks just slightly darker then the max on my test strips of 240. I have still not added any more chlorine and I hae not started running the salt water system to generate any chlorine. I plan to take another sample to the pool place tomorrow.

So what should I do now? Keep addint muratic acid? When should I put some liquid chlorine or start the salt system? I'm afraid I'm gonna end up with algae soon (it has been cloudy and raining here the last several days so hopefully that keeps the algage at bay. I have been running the filter pump 24/7 except for cleanings.

Is the green water safe to swim in? I feel like this is never going to clear up. Why is the water in the bottle clear but the pool definately not?

Please help...