Aluminum flocs (sulfates or polychlorides) are difficult to work with as they have very specific pH requirements. Also, you can “over floc” the water by adding too much and that can cause cloudiness as the floc remains as a fine suspension instead of a dense agglomeration of particulates. This is one of the many reasons TFP cautions against the use of flocculants - they have few upsides and LOTS of downsides.
The only flocculant I've tried was the aluminum chloride Ez-Clor Drop Out. I followed the instructions, which said best results are from pH 7.5 to 8.0 so I adjusted my pH up from the <= 6.8 post-MM level to 7.6. 14 oz is the EZ-Clor prescribed normal dose for my pool but the instructions said "to speed settling time, you may double or triple Drop Out dosage" so I added 32 oz (2.3 times normal dose). Again, I didn't notice any improvement in particles size (filter efficacy) or drop time.
I had just about the same level of cloudiness when I rescued this pool, but most of it cleared relatively quickly with just the sand filter and I only had to use DE at the very end to put some "polish" on the water. This time, even DE as a filter enhancer seems to have met its match after, admittedly, removing a quite a bit of white stuff. What's remains must be very small. Maybe it will return the water to its previous crystal clear state eventually, but it seems like it will take a very, very long time (and lots of electricity). At least I'm wasting less water now with the backflush period about every two days.:lol:
It sounds to me like your water is essentially clouded by a suspension of fine particulates either caused by the Metal Magic, the flocculant or both. Your sand filter, by itself, is incapable of efficiently filtering this stuff out. The clarifier will hopefully work (they may be sending you their chitosan based clarifier) but DE in the filter will do the same job.
At this point, it doesn’t matter anymore (vacuum to waste or backwash) as you’ll be sending water out of your pool no matter what you use.
The 48 hour drop period is too long and CC climbs, requiring a SLAM. Yes--EXO is the chitosan clarifier and I'll be trying it. The goal is to enable the sand filter to do the job, rather than dropping the particles. The ProTeam plan for me is to start with their SpaPure Oxidizing Shock, shortly followed by Filter Magic, and then the EXO and then repeat EXO or change clarifiers as indicated by the results.