I have frogs in my black lagoon. Help!

Jump to latest Follow Reply
T

trinity41

0
Aug 3, 2007
7
west tx
I have an inground pool that looks like a really bad swamp. We have frogs living in it! We started out the season just wanting the pool people to give it a good vacuum. I live in west Texas and we had about 1/2 inch of dirt/mud at the bottom of the pool. We were having problems vacuuming it out ourselves, so that's why we called them. They finally showed up 2 months (not joking) later and they decided that we have too much calcium scale on the sides of the vinyl. We have well water that is real hard, so yes, I agree with that. They put a case of stuff in to lower the ph to loosen the scale and in the mean time, the chlorine is gone and I can't even see the bottom of the shallow end. There has got to be a better way! I found this sight last night. I consider myself a beginner, so don't assume I know much about pools. Any info will be greatly appreciated. Also, here's what I have in #s.

22 x 40 inground 10' deep
clorine 0
ph 7.5
alkalinity it took 6 drops in 25ml to turn it pink

I don't know how many gallons. I forgot to use the pool calc to check

Wendy
 
Find your pool's capacity. My SWAG is that it's about 35,000 gallons. I'd put 9 or 10 jugs of ultra bleach in it with the pump running and check the chlorine four hours later. You want to hold your chlorine at 15ppm and check it as often as you can. Every four hours isn't too often, but every eight hours is about as long as you want to let it go. You will go through more chlorine than you ever imagined :shock: If you can get a decent price on 12% chlorine from a pool store, that's great.

If your test kit won't measure chlorine that high, add three tablespoons distilled water to one tablespoon pool water in a glass. Mix and then test the mixture. Multiply the reading by four to get your pool's level.

The most important thing is to keep that high chlorine level in there all the time. In the beginning, the pool may consume 5ppm per hour, so you have to stay on it. Don't worry about the crazy looks at Walmart when you buy whole cart loads of bleach.

While this is going on, run your filter 24/7, clean it whenever it needs it. If it's a cartridge filter or DE filter, this may be more than once a day. For sand, backwash whenever you see the pressure up 5 or 6 psi. You are going for circulation here, because it doesn't do any good to try to filter the algae out before it's dead. Brush or vacuum the pool as much as you can so the chlorine can get to the algae.

Read my post here about my algae this spring to get an idea how it will go.
 
Well, you definately need to get that chlorine level up to shock your pool and get all the crud and critters vacuumed out. I'd bring it up to 15 and keep it at that level day in and day out until it holds at 15 overnight. Then bring it down to normal level and make sure you test and add chlorine regularly to keep your level up so you don't get this situation again.

There are stickies of links that you can use to calc the volume and get the dosages for your volume.

Your alk sounds pretty low, but your pH seems okay.

Don't worry, hang out here and ask questions and within a few days, you'll be a pro.
 
John,

Thanks so much for the info. On my way to Wal-mart to get the bleach. BTW, I have a sand filter and the gage is broken. Is this easy to replace, and if so is a pool store the only place to buy one? So, if I read it right, put the filter on recirculate? Do I need to backwash first? One more thing, do I distribute the bleach all over the pool, or just dump it in?

Again, thanks!!

Wendy
 
trinity41 said:
John,

Thanks so much for the info. On my way to Wal-mart to get the bleach. BTW, I have a sand filter and the gage is broken. Is this easy to replace, and if so is a pool store the only place to buy one? So, if I read it right, put the filter on recirculate? Do I need to backwash first? One more thing, do I distribute the bleach all over the pool, or just dump it in?

Again, thanks!!

Wendy
Click to expand...

You can get a cheap gauge at Walmart sometimes, but they don't last more than a season. You'll be better off if you have one during this process, so get what you can get. Leave the filter on filter so you can get whatever debris out you can. The reason I said that the circulation was most important, is that as your filter gets dirty, its filtering ability improves, but frequent backwashing maximizes circulation. Pour the bleach in slowly, preferably in front of a return or into the skimmer with the pump running. I think Poconos on PF said it first, but I try to keep the stream of the bleach the diameter of a pencil or smaller to avoid excess bleach concentration in the skimmer or on the liner.

If you start today, you should see some kind of improvement by the end of the weekend, and probably swimming by next weekend if all is well in the system.
 
trinity41 said:
I have an inground pool that looks like a really bad swamp. We have frogs living in it! . . .
Click to expand...

If you hadn't mentioned the size of the pool and the fact that you have well water, I would have asked if you bought a house we looked at last year!!

That house was a foreclosure and the pool hadn't been maintained. . . it had apparently been drained and there was just a little water in the deep end. That water was BLACK, had lily pads growing in it, and yes, frogs! It was a relatively small pool, nowhere near as large as you described.

Ironically, the pool was a big reason we didn't seriously consider buying that house. We needed a good-sized yard for our two highly energetic dogs, and the pool and landscaping pretty much ate up the entire yard. The house itself was lovely and the location was good.

We really weren't planning to buy a house with a pool, but the perfect house just happened to have one. I am delighted to have it and will put in a pool wherever I may move next (hope that's not for a LOOOONG time!!)

Anyway, good luck with your pool! Keep the chlorine up there and keep brushing and vacuuming, and it WILL clear. In your location you should have months of swimming season left. Don'tcha love living in Texas? 8)
 
I went to Walmart and bougt 12 large jugs of ultra bleach. Almost ran a lady over. Very hard to stop the cart. :lol:
I used the pool calculator and it said that I had around 60,000 gal of water. It's a weird shape, but I measured as directed. 58,000 + is what it said. That just seems really high. Any comment on this?

Wendy
 
It is one weird shaped pool!! Oval on the deep end, rectangular on the shallow end, but on one side where it starts to get deeper, they cemented or just left an area where they could put a free standing hot tub. My son took a pix of it from the 2nd story. I measured the width from the left side facing the diving board to where the 3rd stair is underwater. Of course the length is end to end. And it's 8' deep. Here it is:
dsc02580jk9.jpg

dsc02581rg3.jpg


-Wendy
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
More questions !!!! I put 2088 oz. of cl in yesterday. Of course with the shape that my pool is in, I didn't expect it to register. I bought 34 gal of 96oz. (3264oz.) just a while ago. From what I gather on other posts, I should be putting this in in the evening. My test kit does not test cya, but I bet that would be 0. I bought a 4lb jug of it at walmart. Should I put it in? If I'm understanding it right, cl tabs will raise the cya some. I don't know if I mentioned before (if I go back and look, I will lose this post) that our well water is quite hard. There is scale build up on the liner that has been flaking off since the pool people put a TON of ph lowering stuff in it. I assume that that is how it became so nasty. They never put any chlorine in it. From the very start, all I wanted them to do was vacuum the pool out. God knows what kind of bill they will send me. I could be completely off base, but I think that this guy either didn't know what he was doing or he was ripping me off, or both.
One more thing, should I be brushing while I am trying to kill the algae?

Thanks to everyone who is helping me!!
Wendy
 
trinity41 said:
One more thing, should I be brushing while I am trying to kill the algae?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. If it's any consolation, that pool isn't nearly as dirty as many I've seen. You can see your steps. My guess is still in the 35,000 gallon range.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply