first time trying your expertise.

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One of the reasons your chlorine is not holding, aside from the algae, is that it is being broken down by the UV rays in the sun. CYA also known as stabilizer or conditioner, protects the chlorine from the sun. Think of it as sunscreen for your chlorine. The ideal range for CYA is 30-50ppm. During a slam it should be 20-30. If the pucks you were using contained trichlor or dichlor they would also contain CYA. If your pucks were calcium hypochlorite then they did not contain CYA, only calcium. Dry chlorine granules will either be trichlor/dichlor or calcium hypochlorite. You can buy CYA/stabilizer/conditioner in granule form and add just what you need to the pool. We recommend putting 1-2 pounds at a time in a clean white sock, tying it off and placing it in the skimmer with the pump running until fully dissolved. Once it has fully dissolved you will be able to run the CYA test and check the level. While waiting for it to dissolve, dose your pool as if the full amount of CYA you added was already active. You do not want to over shoot your CYA, since the only way to remove excess is to drain and replace water. It degrades too slowly to go away on its own, and it does not evaporate out with the water.
 
zea3 said:
One of the reasons your chlorine is not holding, aside from the algae, is that it is being broken down by the UV rays in the sun. CYA also known as stabilizer or conditioner, protects the chlorine from the sun. Think of it as sunscreen for your chlorine. The ideal range for CYA is 30-50ppm. During a slam it should be 20-30. If the pucks you were using contained trichlor or dichlor they would also contain CYA. If your pucks were calcium hypochlorite then they did not contain CYA, only calcium. Dry chlorine granules will either be trichlor/dichlor or calcium hypochlorite. You can buy CYA/stabilizer/conditioner in granule form and add just what you need to the pool. We recommend putting 1-2 pounds at a time in a clean white sock, tying it off and placing it in the skimmer with the pump running until fully dissolved. Once it has fully dissolved you will be able to run the CYA test and check the level. While waiting for it to dissolve, dose your pool as if the full amount of CYA you added was already active. You do not want to over shoot your CYA, since the only way to remove excess is to drain and replace water. It degrades too slowly to go away on its own, and it does not evaporate out with the water.
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Sounds good. I will try to pick some up and get it added.

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JVTrain said:
Adding algaecide isn't going to help the SLAM process. Algaecide can help PREVENT algae such as when you winterize but is fairly useless in actually eliminating algae. Don't add any more. Save it as a preventative to add when you winterize.
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Got it. Thanks for the tip!
 
Your SLAM will go faster and you'll use less bleach $$$ in total if you test more often and try to keep the FC at 10 or 12. When it's dropping down to 5 or 6.5ppm it's giving algae a chance to recover and reproduce. You need to keep it up there to kill it off.

I think it would be a good idea to test for CYA and then add a stabilizer to get the CYA into the pool sooner. In your case I'd hang it in front of a return and wring the sock often to get it dissolved as soon as possible. If you need some, walmart, homedepot, ....
If you have a CYA level of 30 it will protect your chlorine from burning off during the day in the sun. It's important to always have it at the SLAM level throughout the day as best you can but especially important to bring it up to SLAM FC in the late evening so it has overnight to work on algae without any sun depleting it. More bang for your buck so to speak :D

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Suggested putting the CYA in from of the return as tossing it in the skimmer puts a lot of it into the filter and if you are doing a lot of backwashing you might end up flushing it out. Once it dissolves from the sock it still takes a while till it's dissolved enough to go through the filter. If it's in front of the return it drops into the pool and finishes dissolving there.
 

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