sorry to leave you hanging. the pool is doing great. the cover trick worked to the extent the pool gave me a chance to fight down the algae. the other thing I found I had an odd alkalinity. it was about 70. the pool store guy said it should be about 125? dunno about that but we put in a 13.5lb bag of baking soda to flip it back and about 4 days later you could see the pattern on the bottom again. put in clarifier and the pool has been running fine since. Thanks