Just a suggestion. Walmart and sometimes Kmart sell a 6 way test kit (by Aquachem) that is a good starter kit and much more accurate than the test strips. It uses liquid reagents and costs about $15. You probably paid as much, if not more, for those strips. See if you can find it. It will make getting your pool balanced and swimmable much easier and faster! Test strips are just not good for balancing a pool. They don't have enough accuracy and precision. The walmart kit is accurate and easy to use and is what you need right now.

If you REALLY want to do it right either get a Taylor K-2006 kit (around $60 or so) or order the kit from the sister website to this forum www.poolsolutions.com. You want the PS234. It is very similar to the Taylor kit but is a better value for the money. It gives you more of the reagents that you need and that get used up quickly and leaves out 2 pretty useless tests that you really don't need. Even though the kit on poolsolutions costs a bit more it gives you enough reagents for more tests then the Taylor kit, expecially pH and CYA. For example, the Taylor kit only gives you enough to test CYA about 5 times while the PS234 will let you test about 21 times before you need more reagent. All the other tests have enough reagents to do more tests also when compared to the Taylor kit.