Stabilizer Mystery

[CarlD]

Tony, If WalMart is 300 yards away and 1.5 gallons are $2, go with it. It doesn't matter if you use Walmart 6% or carboys at 12.5%, as long as you get your FC where it belongs and keep it there. I like the carboys because I can get them easily, easier than bleach and the price is generally good. Plus the jugs are reusable like deposit bottles. But the important thing is you are using sodium hypochlorite. In that, there's no difference between bleach and Liquid Chlorine.

As for CYA, it still takes 2-7 days for it to dissolve and affect the reading, so you cannot expect immediate results.

CarlD

[TonyPH12345]

Heheh... With as much NaClO as I've dumped into the pool in the last five days (I'm up to about 12 gallons so far) I will probably end up with a significantly salt-water pool!

But things ARE improving. The algae deposits continue to oxidize and turn brown and brush away. I've removed the Polaris' bag because it's not doing much good other than to clog itself up with slime, but the tail sweep is helping somewhat, and it's agitating the junk on the bottom back into suspension in the water to draw into the filter...

Pressing on...

[madwil]

12 gallons? I used about 50 last year, after my 2 week vacation without any Cl added to the pool...
Keep adding, keep the FC at or above the right levels per "best guess" chart, and the algae will clear!

[TonyPH12345]

Ok, so for those keeping score, here's the final...

I put in a total of about:
30 gallons of bleach (20 1.5 gallon bottles)
8 pounds of CalHypo powder (to "Spot Treat" some areas in the fillets of the steps and lounge)
5 pounds of Borax
25 pounds of DE
I also:
Replaced two DE grids
Replaced my original Rainbow 320 chlorinator with a brand new one

...before things finally went "static."

Once things balanced, I also found need to raise CYA again (which I did with three pounds of Dichlor shock)
Floc'd and Vac'd.
Backwashed a total of three times.
Opened and Cleaned the filter after the final backwash. The smell was indescribable!

For the last two weeks, my pool has been around this mark:

FC 3.5 to 5ppm
CC (none)
CYA 30-50 ppm
TA 120
CH 320

... but I think the pool ultimately won the war. I think I'm going to have to replaster. But that's a subject for another thread.

Thank you ALL for your help! I couldn't have gotten past it without ya'll.