Fine Green/Brown Powder in Bromine Pool

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poolin207

Member
Aug 16, 2022
7
Maine
Hello everyone,

We have been having issues with our 24,000 gallon pool on and off for the past couple of years. We began to get a very fine brown/green looking powder at the bottom of our pool. Originally, we were running a DE filter using Fiberclear instead of DE. The pool uses bromine through a brominator. We were told by our pool company that it could be the fine DE in the system and we should look to switch to a sand filter. We switched to a sand filter last year and so far the results have been the same. We recently began to use a one micron pool filter bag and vacuuming straight to waste. However, after a couple of days of nonuse, the powder is back. We commonly fill the pool with well water when the water gets low. Our water samples all come back clear as well as at home tests. We have had other pool companies come out. One said pollen, but it is past the peak of pollen season and we aren’t seeing any decrease. They all agreed it is not sand from the sand filter. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
 

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Welcome to TFP. That looks like algae. Do you have one of the test kits that TFP uses to make recommendations? The TF100 from tftestkits.net or the Taylor K2006C, available from Amazon.

With one of those kits in hand, you can perform an overnight chlorine loss test. If you lose more than 1ppm chlorine, you know that it is fighting algae, since that and sunlight are the only things that use up chlorine.
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Thank you all so much. We will look into those test kits and try it out. The issue is that the pool company that tests our water always says the chemicals (including bromine) are spot on. Certainly open to trying anything though!
 
There's a chance the DMH in the bromine tablets has built up and is preventing the bromine from sanitizing your water. Unfortunately there's no way to test for this level, but if normal bromine levels are not preventing algae then that's a likely possibility. It can only be removed through water replacement.

And to clarify, nobody recommends any test strips. Anything on the residential market are cheap junk. The kits Kellyp recommended are high quality residential kits. They are primarily designed for chlorine (TFPC recommends the use of chlorine over bromine in part because of this DMH issue) but can accurately measure bromine as well with a few adjustments to the calculations.
 
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Donldson said:
There's a chance the DMH in the bromine tablets has built up and is preventing the bromine from sanitizing your water. Unfortunately there's no way to test for this level, but if normal bromine levels are not preventing algae then that's a likely possibility. It can only be removed through water replacement.

And to clarify, nobody recommends any test strips. Anything on the residential market are cheap junk. The kits Kellyp recommended are high quality residential kits. They are primarily designed for chlorine (TFPC recommends the use of chlorine over bromine in part because of this DMH issue) but can accurately measure bromine as well with a few adjustments to the calculations.
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Thank you so much. We are going to explore a complete water replacement. With the end of the season coming up, hopefully we will start clean next year!
 
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poolin207 said:
Just thinking some more about the pool, while we have replaced the filter from DE to sand, we never replaced the brominator. If the bromine is the issue, is this something we should look into?
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For sure, if you’re draining the water anyway would be better to just use normal chlorine.
 
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