Algae I.D. PLEASE!

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Scum balls and slime bags- makes pool maintenance sound kinda scary. I am up for trying the DE in the sand filter trick- can I use regular agricultural grade DE (from the farm store) or only pool grade. I do not need a 50lb bag of the pool stuff, so will need to see about getting some from a friend if I need the pool kind only (pool store will not sell me a smaller amount).
 
I think what I'm catching in my skimmer sock must be pollen, and there's been quite a bit of it. Before I learned about the sock, I still had about the same amount of stuff on the pool bottom, but my SD40 psi was increasing, as we supposed it should be. I use zeo sand, which supposedly filters down to 3 microns. I don't know how small pollen is. But now I catch a bunch of the stuff in my sock, and still have the same amount of the fine dust on the pool floor as before. We haven't backwashed since we did the Yellow Out treatment in June, and started using the sock in July. It takes forever for our psi to move, which I'm attributing to the skimmer sock.

I used one of those little vac's you hook up to your hose, and doubled the little bag with a skimmer sock and it's original bag and vac'd it up - only to find out that it went through both bags and back into the pool. That was in July. But I've been sweeping my pool each evening when I add my bleach, thinking I needed to make sure the bleach didn't settle on my liner (I no longer sweep with the bleach addition). On the occassions when I didn't sweep it for a several days, the stuff accumulated, but not in clumps - it was spread sparsley across the floor. And I had none in the deep end for the longest time, until I followed instructions to sweep it all to the deep end....duh...for the bottom drain to take out (I don't have a bottom drain). And now I get it in the deep end too.

By the way, I think I read somewhere that you can't add DE to zeo sand. It will clog it up. You can add it to the regular sand in sand filters though.
 
I couldn't believe the pictures I saw on this post and the link to the other post were identical to the stuff we've had at the bottom of our pool for a month. I had read on earlier posts that what I had was probably pollen and I should vacuum it up and check to see if it came back in the exact same spot. It seemed to reappear, but maybe not in the exact same spot. Then we had 10 inches of rain in 24 hours. I had to drain water out of the pool 3 times. My husband was still convinced it was pollen. We've had no trouble with the chemical balance of the water. No CCs and FC stayed alright. Then we had more torrential rains and couldn't vacuum. Then more rains. Now I can't see if there is "pollen" on the bottom because the pool has turned green! I have posted on a separate thread, but please post if your pollen ends up turning your pool into a green pond so we know if this is the same thing. Thanks!
 
amersonl, I drained our pool down as far as I could go this a.m. and still be able to leave it running. Then, I added a gallon of bleach and just let it go. It's rained all day, heavy and then not so heavy. In all, I think I've drained about 3-4" today. So far, it still looks clear. We should only have drizzle to light rain all night, then partly sunny tomorrow - 88 :)

But we added our 2nd return in the shallow end last weekend. I haven't swept all week since I vac'd last weekend. And this afternoon, as I waded through the BIG POOL we now have in our back yard, out to the small pool :), there appears to be very little of the "sand" at this point. I know we still have it, but gosh, not nearly so bad as it's been all summer. I don't think we'll have the mean green you have, since we'll clear up tomorrow. But I'm still waiting to MA shock in hopes that Jason, Dave, Richard or one of those really smart guys will figure out what we all have.

I'll bet if we got everyone who has this "sand" to post a good photo of their water, they'd all look alike! IT'S A CONSPIRACY, I TELL YA!!
 
Wow, this is so similar. We are only about 40 miles from Cherie. We are now using the solar cover, and our "pollen" amount seems to have stabilized. The top of the solar cover is always covered with a greenish dust though. Fall pollen season will be starting shortly due to mild weather and the rain we had, so I expect it to get worse again.
Also, our filter has only been running for a month, and I have vacuumed weekly, but so far I have had only 1 (one) psi in pressure increase. I clean out the skimmer basket and the pump strainer (after a bug swarm got in the pool) so I know it gets stuff in it, but apparently not filter-sized stuff.
Question: So, if you filter pressure does not go up for months on end, do you still backwash on some sort of schedule, or do you just wait until it goes up? I am not sure whether I should backwash for the sake of maintenance or not. We have vacuumed up a fair bit of the "pollen", but since it keeps coming back, so I am not sure if there is anything in the filter or not.
PS We only got 1.5 inches of rain from the hurricane. My pool was already a little low coming into it, so we just drained a little. No green swamps yet.
 
Well I still don't know what Im dealing with and Im not sure if it is a cure or not but.......After sturring the "stuff" up every day my water started getting murky and a bit green.The bottom was covered with the "stuff".The #'s were all good.The ship was goin down!Went and got some flock(Aqua Chem super Clarifier)in 3 days the water is CRYSTAL and instead of the "stuff" being all over the bottom it was in piles of little beads(easy to vacume to waste)..NOT like a poof powder!AND,when I backwashed tons of green "stuff"came out.That didn't happen before flock.BUT.....every day so far their is still several piles of "stuff" on the bottom and in the backwash.I still don't know if I just haven't gotten it all OR this "stuff" is a multiplying mutant ninga algae!
 
Buzz, I'm beginning to think it's pollen myself! I finally swept the first time today in several days. There was lots of dust-up from the floor, more than usual. But I went from sweeping daily to not sweeping for several days. I couldn't sweep the sides because the ground is not packed enough yet where we had re-dig it to lay pipe for the 2nd return - so I don't know if there's much on the sides. So I just swept the bottom. Have backswimmers again though.

This summer, we did the vac to waste thing and backwashed several times (vac'd to waste a couple of times) and it still comes back. So I'm thinking it MUST be pollen. But I put clarifier in this afternoon, just to see what it would do, and swept the floor real good. Gonna put the auto cleaner in tomorrow and let it run for awhile. Hangin' out 'til the gurus on here come up with an answer on this! :)
 
Glad the pics got posted, as it looks like what i have on a regular basis. Mine is in much smaller quantities and just congregates in the deep end seam area and along the deep end edges of the liner (guess it "rolls down hill"?). It "fluffs" up when I brush the bottom, but there is no indication of it being on my side walls when I brush. My water is perfectly clear and sparkly and I do not lose FC overnight. I just learned to live with it. I brush several times a week, letting the bottom filter take it out for me. It usually re-appears within a couple of days. I Wonder if i could put something over the skimmer basket to try to filter it out? My inlet/skimmer is an aqua genie, which is a large opening.
 
h2, can you try sweeping it all to the bottom drain, then drain to waste and backwash, and then see if it comes back? I'm still beginning to lean toward this being pollen, since one of the posters here in north/ne Texas says we have pollen flying year round. Still seems strange to me that when we had it installed May 21, that we had a perfectly clear bottom until about June 20ish. But pollen is looking to be more like the culprit at this point.
 
amjohn said:
Wow, this is so similar. We are only about 40 miles from Cherie. We are now using the solar cover, and our "pollen" amount seems to have stabilized. The top of the solar cover is always covered with a greenish dust though. Fall pollen season will be starting shortly due to mild weather and the rain we had, so I expect it to get worse again.
Also, our filter has only been running for a month, and I have vacuumed weekly, but so far I have had only 1 (one) psi in pressure increase. I clean out the skimmer basket and the pump strainer (after a bug swarm got in the pool) so I know it gets stuff in it, but apparently not filter-sized stuff.
Question: So, if you filter pressure does not go up for months on end, do you still backwash on some sort of schedule, or do you just wait until it goes up? I am not sure whether I should backwash for the sake of maintenance or not. We have vacuumed up a fair bit of the "pollen", but since it keeps coming back, so I am not sure if there is anything in the filter or not.
PS We only got 1.5 inches of rain from the hurricane. My pool was already a little low coming into it, so we just drained a little. No green swamps yet.
Click to expand...

amjohn, I'm sure someone will pop in here soon to answer this question more knowledgeably. But I've read in a couple places differing advice. One says only backwash when the psi increases. The other says if your psi never increases, backwash once per month anyway. We haven't backwashed since we did the Yellow Out/shock thing at the end of June/July 4th. And our psi has hardly moved up. Actually, now that we have the 2nd return in, it went down. So I'll have to re-establish a new psi norm to go from. We're about to install the 2-speed pump, which will probably change our norm yet again.

But as I said, we haven't backwashed since July 4th weekend and have had no trouble, except for the "mutant ninja algae" poofy "stuff"!
 

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A large filter can go a full season or more without backwashing. I recommend backwashing at least once a year, at the end of the swim season.

It is also possible that the gauge isn't reading correctly for one reason or another.
 
Sure, I can give it a try next time i backwash. I cant actually "sweep" it into the bottome drain, as it puffs up and mixes back into the water, but it gets filtered out during my brushing; though, only temporarily. Like I said, i just decided to live with it, as its not a large quanity and only appears in the deep end seam and outer edges. I brush a lot more than I used to, which is a good thing. I used to think it may be algae too, but my water is crystal clear, sparkly and I don't lose FC overnight. Its a grayish color (powdery). I never tried to get any out to see what it actually looks like.
 
The grayish "stuff" i had re-appearing in the deep end seam is gone and has not returned. I took a pair of panty hose and cut the legs off, tied thel leftovers into a knot and stretched the top of the panty hose over my skimmer basket. It is obviously straining out that "stuff" and I now have a clear pool bottom.
 
h2ctpdjl said:
The grayish "stuff" i had re-appearing in the deep end seam is gone and has not returned. I took a pair of panty hose and cut the legs off, tied thel leftovers into a knot and stretched the top of the panty hose over my skimmer basket. It is obviously straining out that "stuff" and I now have a clear pool bottom.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear it was resolved! :goodjob:
 
I guess it is time to get a skimmer sock. I am pretty sure this is pollen and fine dust. The pollen in my pool had eased up since I put on the solar cover- just a little spread around the bottom. Then, my neighbor was out mowing his pasture the other day - thick clouds of diesel, dust, pollen, horse pucky, etc. It was hot and I wanted to swim, so I did- big mistake. He was mowing about 100 feet away, but you would think he has been shooting it directly into my pool! I took the off the solar cover to swim 24 hours after the mowing, and the bottom of my pool looked like a lake bottom. Covered with greenish, fine, poofy stuff. FC and CC are fine though, so it is not algae (unless it comes in "turbo-growth").
Well, I vacuumed like mad yesterday, and replaced the solar cover. I was able to pick up a lot of it, but I suspect I will be fighting this battle for a while until i get a skimmer sock. Good thing that pasture only gets mowed a few times a year.
 
Sorry for your problems amjohn! I've decided the same - it's pollen. I stated on another thread that our poofy has slacked off a lot. We've caught scores and scores of bees in our skimmer - did I mention....SCORES? But I hardly have any on the bottom anymore. One thing I did is that I stopped cleaning my skimmer sock daily (sometimes twice daily) and only clean it about every 2-3 days, when I can see that it's really starting to pile up. But with all the bees we're now getting, I'm back to emptying almost daily - only because of the bees!

The socks/pantyhose things work really well. I'm relieved to know it wasn't algae!
 
Well, the poofy stuff battle took an algae turn. Three days after the pasture mowing incident, the yellow poofy stuff was still all over and the water started getting greenish and a little cloudy. I vacuumed thoroughly and watched all that stuff disappear into my filter and thought glumly about how it would all be back on the bottom the next day. Then I had a "brilliant" thought. Why not backwash the filter right away while the stuff was still in there? I had not backwashed it yet, so what could hurt? Wow. You would thought we were pumping out a mudhole from all the nasty water that came out of there. And it just kept coming and coming. Also, my filter pressure dropped 3 psi (not exactly the 5-7 that the manual recommends, but at least I know the gage is registering now).
Well, the next day there was stuff back on the bottom, but about 2/3 as much. So I did it again the next day- filter water was less nasty and took less time to clear. Plus, I started shocking and brushing for the green and cloudy-a little algae in the mix I guess. Also opening the solar cover a few hours in the afternoon to let the pool breathe. It is clearing up and getting blue again, and the sediment on the bottom has returned to its previous level. I am waiting for my skimmer socks and scum balls to arrive and then will do another vacuuming with the skimmer sock in place to see if that reduces the poofy stuff even further. We are hitting the peak of ragweed season, and I am surrounded by close to a 1000 acres of weedy pasture (really), so pollen will continue to be a problem for while for me.
 
h2ctpdjl said:
The grayish "stuff" i had re-appearing in the deep end seam is gone and has not returned. I took a pair of panty hose and cut the legs off, tied thel leftovers into a knot and stretched the top of the panty hose over my skimmer basket. It is obviously straining out that "stuff" and I now have a clear pool bottom.
Click to expand...

Were those Leggs? :poke: :poke: :poke:
 
Bummer amjohn! I still have my poofy stuff, but still not nearly as much since we put the 2nd return in. And actually, I've been a bit tied up lately and am not :oops: taking care of the pool like I should. We let a ton of water out to do the 2nd return, which lowered the CYA a little. But then, I accidentally topped off for over 2 hours, where I only needed 30 minutes! So I had to let out another 5" :rant: I checked my CYA this weekend and it's not registering on Dave's tube that goes all the way down to 20! So I've tossed a few tabs in (out of stabilizer), which I haven't used since June, to let it slowly come back up and take care of the chlorine for now - since I still don't have time to take care of it properly for now.

But I still have clear water, and a little (enough to still be annoying) poofy stuff. No green here. And I still haven't backwashed. I will do as Richard (was it Richard?) suggested and backwash at the end of the season, which I sorta guess is now, huh? It'll be interesting to see if any green stuff washes out. But I'm still cleaning LOTS of bees out of the skimmer sock - so I'm still convinced that it's pollen. We'll probably use a cover from now on - to spare the bees from drowning!
 
Cherie and amjohn, I don't know if you are still watching this thread but I am curious if either of you ever completely resolved your brown spot problem? The reason I ask is because I have gone through the same thing you describe and show in your photos. My situation required shocking again(tried to shock for MA a couple months ago) as if it was mustard algae and now I have FINALLY gotten rid of the brown spots that I thought were pollen/dust.
Weird thing is that before I started the shock process, I would never really show an overnight FC loss. I wonder if that really does apply to MA. Also never showed any CCs.
Anyway, I had misread my CYA and didn't shock at a high enough level the first time around and I also failed to remove my wedding cake steps(which had an unbelievable amount of brown crud on the bottom under the steps). So I think thats why my problem came back. This time after about four to five nights of shocking, I have only some grayish/white dust in a few spots on the floor that I am assuming is dead algae.
 

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