First SLAM. Taking forever. Need encouragement/pointers.

mariane said:

Hopefully "It worked. Sue me." is just you being funny.
But . . .
At TFPF, we are not here to dictate what you do with and to your pool. We just want pool owners to know how to care for their pool, knowing what and how to use the available products and chemicals without a lot of unnecessary expense, causing unnecessary problems with the pool.
Clarifiers are an extra item many times not needed, and when used improperly, cause bad results by gumming up the filter. When the clarifier is vacuumed to waste, it does not settle in the filter to gum it up.
It's a tradeoff - expensive product or pool owner patience P.O.P. for short.
Glad you had good results.

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Yes, It's just my weird humor. I Love the TFP method, this will be my 3rd season using it. before resorting to clarifier, I called a local pool store to ask if they had DE in stock so that I could add a small amount to my sand filter to try and clear up the water that way. I ended up stuck on the phone for a 20 minute sales pitch about how I needed to bring him a sample of my water, and how only his machine could perform an accurate water test, and how only he had quality chemicals.. and never put borax or baking soda in your pool.. yada yada. It was ridiculous. All that, just to find out that he didn't have any DE to sell.

DE was my first option to attempt to clear the fog, but once I realized that I couldn't get any locally (small town) I went to home depot and bought a $10 bottle of clarifier. Not flocculant.. clarifier. There was nothing to vaccum to waste since it didn't leave a mess on the bottom like a floc would. I certainly made sure to backflush the filter. I think of it as reaching into the back of the toolbox for that seldom used tool. I'm confident that using 4 oz. over 2 days, diluted into 7700 gallons, filtered by 175Lbs. of sand, that there was never a risk presented to my system. As far as the expense.. What was getting expensive was more than 2 weeks of dumping loads of 12.5% bleach to maintain 20PPM FC. The algae was dead, and I was trying to speed the clearing process to stop wasting bleach. So far, so good!