confused... or impatient lol

[danadly]

Just took the cover off my pool last night.... The water was clear but there was lots of green at the bottom.

I immediately dumped 4 gallons of 10% chlorine and turned the pump on circulate (but not filter).

Last night about an hour after putting chlorine in my test results:

FC 15
CYA 0
PH 7.2
TA 90
CH 100

This morning my FC was at 14. I really expected it to be much lower however the pool water is very cold right now. My water looked worse. It is now cloudy, murky green and I can't even see the bottom instead of clear with only green on the bottom like it was before I started to treat.

This morning, I had to go out and get stabilizer and when I returned my FC was at 10. I added enough Chlorine to get it back to 15.
I turned on the filter and I added enough stabilizer to get my CYA up to 40 but I know that will take time to get to so I am not sure what the best shock level I should use. Recommendations? Should I use what I need as if CYA is at 40?

Also, since adding the stabilizer I am not losing chlorine... I have tested it every hour for the last 5 hours and it is still at 15.

So my water doesn't look better but worse and my FC is not going down at all in full sun since adding stabilizer. Is that normal? I have read all the articles on algae and shocking your pool, etc. They all sound like my FC should be going down dramatically if I am fighting algae.

 

[JasonLion]

It is impossible to be sure, but the most likely possibility is that the initial chlorine took care of any algae that might have been alive, but turning on the pump stirred up the dust on the bottom and got it into the water, causing the cloudiness. It is also likely that CYA wasn't really zero to start with. The test will often read levels of 10 or 15 as if they were zero, which is what I suspect happened to you. The stirred up dust will also shield the chlorine from sunlight to some extent.

The chances are that your filter will filter out the dust fairly quickly, except for some that will settle back to the bottom and can be vacuumed up. Meanwhile, do an overnight FC loss test to be sure you have killed everything, and give the filter some time to filter that dust/debris out of the water.

 

[danadly]

Thank you for the response and reassurance!!! I start to doubt myself and worry I am doing wrong. That made total sense.

 

[danadly]

what shock level should I use since I cant get a real CYA reading for a week???

 

[elwood58]

Shock for your target CYA. It may not show up in testing for several days, but it is in there.

 

[jblizzle]

Really, you shot a little high on the FC to start with (assuming your CYA was truly 0). If you no expect to be at 40ppm, then the shock FC level is not 16ppm:
pool-school/chlorine_cya_chart_shock