Hi Pool Girl.

We just moved into this house in April - and in May, we opened the pool. The previous owners only left 1.5' of water in the pool (it's a 24' round AG pool and is about 4' deep). I filled the pool, from my well (hadn't come across the PoolForum at this point).

The woman I hired to help me open it and show me how to have a pool, shocked it and it turned 'coffee-with-a-little-cream' brown. I purchased $140 worth of sequestrants, and after about 3 or 4 days, the water was clear with a tinge of green (metals). Then we were urged to sanitize the pool by bringing up the CL slowly. Not knowing what that meant, I put 6 gals of bleach in, and 2 days later, the water actually looked darker than it did the first time it was shocked (now it was a 'coffee-with-very-little-cream brown). When I had my CL levels tested that morning, my CL level was 3 (low-end range for normal swimming conditions).

We were ready to dump it or tear it down (seriously) - then something made us try this homemade filter and my water has been clear for 2 days now, with a CL level of 5 (the high side of normal swim-ready levels).

Right now I'm doing a stain removal treatment and my CL is very low, then I have to add CL again, so we'll see what happens then (but I'm going to have our homemade filter in as I do it).

I also purchased a hose prefilter as well as a Slime Bag that I put over it and we used that prior to adding the 6 gals of bleach (we kept having to fill due to all the backwashing we had to do to our sand filter during the sequestrant stage.

But as our homemade filter kept working, I added bleach every day prior to this treatment without any color change.