Quote Originally Posted by Jjnol View Post
Thanks so much. Very enlightening. So cyanic acid is in essence the 'stabilizer' factor I've seen in the test kits. Mine was on the high side a few days ago when my water level was to the 1/4 of skimmer level. I was almost going to add water but we had a day of flash flood weather and I had to drain the pool from above the skimmer to 3/4 and now stabilizer looks OK. If anything I have to work at keeping the chlorine level up. Not seen the lock-in. I've never seen algae.
Justin, what is your CYA level now? It's actually Cyanuric or Isocyanuric acid. Yes it's stabilizer and it prevents chlorine from breaking down too fast, especially in direct sun where UV can break chlorine down in as little as 15 minutes. But it's a two edged sword as you need higher levels of chlorine to maintain sanitary water...see our "Best Guess Table" for the levels of free chlorine needed for various levels of CYA.

The previous owner was telling me he only used the copper based shock in the winter because it works very differently to create free chlorine then the other treatments. And seriously other then these little filmy patches that I've seen floating on the surface, appearance and chemistry has never been seriously out of whack since I got it cleaned up after winter.
I have no idea what he was thinking. Copper kills algae, but it doesn't sanitize your pool. If the copper kills the algae, you don't need chlorine to do it, "saving" your chlorine for sanitation. So the theory goes. But copper doesn't create Free Chlorine.


BTW, this evening I looked and they were gone. All sucked into the skimmer. I shocked it last night.

If I can get the right light and angle I'll use the macro lens on my digital SLR to see if I can get a photo of the translucent floaters as they get sucked into the skimmer. They do come and go. It may just be some form of pollen for all I know.

It's good to know it's not the hardness. I'm not going to play with adding calcium as long as it won't cause a problem for my vinyl surfaces. Someone told me having too soft water would dry out my vinyl which did not make sense to me.
Makes no sense to us, either. Your instincts are right on. Calcium is to prevent mortar, plaster and concrete from having their calcium leeched out. Period.


The stuff I use for shock come in 1lb packets from PoolTime and seem to work well.
What does it say is in it? Hard to tell if it's good or bad just from a name.

And concerning the CYA it's my understanding that the tablets I put in my floating dispenser may actually be adding that to the pool. I'll check and if so try not to over do that. I thought for a while the more chlorine the better -- clearly not so.

And again thanks for the helpful reply.

Justin
Chlorine tablets are almost always Tri-Chor tablets, and, yes, they do add CYA to your water: For every 10ppm of Free Chlorine they add 6ppm of CYA. That's good when your CYA is low, bad when it's high. They also are very acid and can and will lower your pH. Be very careful though: If they say "Double Acting" or anything by 99% tri-chlor, they are probably adding MORE copper to your water. We recommend against that.

More chlorine generally IS better, but at very high levels it can bleach liners and bathing suits...HOWEVER, if your CYA level is high, the appropriate maintenance level of Free Chlorine probably won't do that.