Janet thanks a ton for the very informative response!

I had my wife go look at the filter the other day and she said it looked to her like the Hayward name we were seeing, but when I went and looked at it as I was filling out the Pool Chart Entry it read fairly clearly "Tagelus" to me, don't know if that makes a difference or not. The model number, serial number, and most of the other info on the tag are completely illegible. The best I could do was to guesstimate that the gallons per minute is rated at 20. As soon as I get done I'll log out and use your tag link to go find that test kit, and this afternoon I'll head up to the wal-mart down the road and start stocking up on bleach. I'm assuming I will need to avoid the non-chlorine bleach my wife uses on our laundry, lol! I'm sure she'd be upset if I were to dump all our bleach into the pool anyways.

So once I get the test kit in and begin getting the chlorine up to shock level, how long will it need to maintain that level in order to kill off all the algae? Is it just a 24 hour thing, or will I have to find some way to test for living algae in the pool? Other than seeing the algae growing on the sides, how can I tell if the cloudiness in the pool is coming from dead floating or live floating algae?

And my kids thank you for the delay of waiting on a test kit, lol! They're spending a few weeks with me this summer and have been pretty much living in that pool, they would be devastated if the last week before they return to their mother's house they had to stay out of the pool due to chlorine levels!

XD