Been out of commission for a while. Thanks very much for everyone's responses. I'm still struggling, have bought 2-9lb. containers of stabilizer and CYA is still registering as zero. This morning, while testing, it finally looks slightly foggy, but no enough to block out the black dot at the bottom of the tube. I filled up my pantyhose stocking with stabilizer last night and this morning it was gone. The temperature here in Missouri is in the 90's this week, so I'm sure it dissolves much quicker than it had when I first wrote. I'm hoping that's a good thing. I work full time, so I can't go out there and squeeze the stocking every hour, but hope to just continually add the stabilizer as soon as I'm home. I really would love it to be sparkling clean again. I know that after you get it to a reasonable level, you need to shock it with the bleach and continually keep it above shock level, while vacuuming and scrubbing, but in doing so, I would be releasing water of course, so wouldn't that lower my CYA again (once I get to that point anyway). Just want to make sure I do it all correctly. Oh, I also threw in some of my chlorine tabs (stabilized) just to add a bit of chlorine in there and hopefully speed up the levels of the stabilizer (is that okay? just trying everything I can). Note that these are leftover tabs from when I used to do things differently, before finding this forum. I don't generally use them, but considering I have some leftover, I thought I'd give it a try.
I'm also wondering if we possibly need to add more sand to our sand filter. We have a Jacuzzi Laser Sand Filter, 190L model. It looks like it says we need 200 lbs of sand. Does that sound right? My husband seems to think that he put in less than 100 lbs of sand, per the pool store guys' recommendation (we don't go to the pool store anymore, btw). I always felt like there were troubles with the filter since last year it seemed that every 2-3 days we were vacuuming up build up of brown dirt like stuff on the bottom of the pool. I just want it functioning, as does my whole family.
Tested my levels this morning.
FC=.5
CC=0
TC = .5
TA = 60 or 70 (is it really supposed to be red or bright pink?)
CYA = 0
Thanks again everyone!