Dealing with ammonia

[zea3]

Well, last week when I tested I discovered I had 0 CYA. I stopped tending my pool in October when my mother became ill and passed away, so there has been plenty of algae building up. I was out of CYA so I just put in 3 jugs of bleach until I could get more supplies. I was wondering if I had ammonia so I bought a test kit for that today and it reads positive 1.0 ppm. Yay.

My question is, do I attempt to add CYA first or do I shock to get rid of the ammonia then add the CYA?

For those trying to crack the CYA conversion mystery, the weather over the winter was mild, with only 1 light freeze, and several warm days in the 70s.

 

[Aquatica]

Very sorry to hear about your mother. I don't know anything about ammonia. hope someone can help you. take care of yourself.

 

[257WbyMag]

Shock it first and hit it hard. It takes a goodly amount of chlorine to clear the ammonia. I would say that you should probably wait until you are free of NH3 before you add more CYA.

 

[duraleigh]

I don't know the absolute answer but it make sense to me, too, to shock without CYA. Like 257 says, you will be consuming quite a bit of FC so make it as "effective" as possible with no CYA.