multiple problems with chemistry, stains, algae

[ccshoe]

I have a 16,000 gallon in ground vinyl lined pool and use a salt chlorine generator. We have had a hard time balancing our chem levels. Last week it finally started to clear up after being very cloudy. That was UNTIL our pump went out. While we waited for the pool guy to fix it our pool sat largely unnoticed, until about day 4 when I opened the cover and was overwhelmed by it looking black and smelling bad. We started dumping chemicals and our pump is now back up and running after being down for over a week. But I still can not get the chemistry levels normal and the water is now cloudy. The chemicals I dumped in were a huge amount of shock and algaecide and by morning we saw drastic results but not much changed since then. Now that we have brushed the walls it looks like we also have a black ring all around the pool

Over the past month I have had super high alkalinity of 240+ and have dumped gallons and gallons of muratic acid in. Before the pump went out I had the alkalinity at about 150. My Cyanuric acid has been reading 0 and I have dumped close to 20 pounds in and have not seen any improvement.

Here are my current readings
Total hardness 300ish
Total Chlorine 0 - even after having the generator set to shock and adding 3 bags of granular shock last night
PH 7.0
Total Alkalinity 240+ again
Cyanuric acid 0
Salt 3100

And just to mention when we add fresh water we use softened water because our well water has such a high, high rust level if we use out of the hard water faucet.--Not sure if this matters!

I am not sure what to do. I feel like a dog chasing my tail.....I am getting no where!

And to top it off our robot is not working again! We have an aquabot t2 and in 3 years of use this will be the second time it needs to go in for repair. I am considering the polaris 9300xi just because of the ease of cleaning the filter. I know it is not as many microns but so far my experience with the aquabot would not lead me to buy another! I am pretty sure my pool hates me and I can say that the feeling is mutual! LOL!---But I do want to love it again!

 

[duraleigh]

Go to pool school and read the process for correctly reducing total alkalinity. You will find it involves aeration and then acid. Using that procedure, lower your TA down to around 100 and keep your pH around 7.4

Solve that problem and then tackle the others...one at a time. The chlorine will be next but get your pH and TA right first.

 

[ccshoe]

The calculator does not say to add muratic acid when I enter in my numbers. In the past this is how I have lowered my alkalinity but I have always just dumped in a gallon for many days in a row. How long do you wait in between adding acid and aerating and then adding acid again? I know you say until the ph levels come up to around 7.4 will that happen with in a few hours or does it take days? What about my pH already being at 7.0?

 

[JasonLion]

If you are losing CYA very quickly, you may have ammonia accumulating in the water. If you add chlorine in the evening, when there is no sunlight, is it all gone an hour later? Most likely you will need to add chlorine quite a number of times before you will be able to maintain an FC level. Once you can maintain an FC level for more than an hour, then start adding CYA again.

Your PH is already low, so wait for it to go up. That might be anywhere from hours to weeks. When it does come up to 7.4 or higher, lower it back down to between 7.0 and 7.2. That will lower the TA level slowly over many cycles.