Maggots in Pool

[Rob]

Ok, not to gross anyone out, but we've had our cover on our pool for about 4-5 days now, since we had a cold snap.

Things have warmed up, so I thought in advance of the weekend, I'd pop it off and get everything setup. We've been maintaining roughy 4-5 FC at 30 ppm CYA the whole time.

Anyways, as I was taking off a section of the liner, I noticed a bunch of white tubular type things, about half an inch long, white in colour. At first I thought they were some sort of plant petal that had blown in, but one moved. I took a closer look, and I'm not positive, but I think they were maggots. On closer inspection, there were about 2 dozen floating on the surface, most not moving. On the bottom though, there were a couple clumps of them, all dead, with I would say over a hundred.

At this stage, I still had the whole cover to remove, it had some bumps under it. I was pretty sure I was going to find something dead floating in the pool, and figured it would be at least somewhat substatial due to the quantity of the larvae. Happily, nothing was dead in the pool.

Anyone have any thoughts on where so many came from? Maybe it is some other sort of insect larvae? We don't have much around here though but mosquitoes.

 

[MikeInTN]

My guess would be some other type of larvae. Flies tend to lay their eggs in dead things (as you know already). There have been some other posters on here who have found insect eggs on their liners above the water line, so that would be my bet; and besides, "I've got some insect larvae in my pool" sounds much, much better than "I got maggots in my pool".

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

This is the third or 4th thread, glad it isn't my pool....

I would just do your best to scoop them all out and then bump up your chlorine an extra few ppms 2 or 3 for a day or two....

Ok, Ick.

 

[Nick]

It's difficult to tell how they got there or where they came from without a identification. It could have been fly maggots (indicates the possibility of a decomposing animal) but then it could have been larvae from insects that lay eggs in moist moist conditions which hatch in to larvae.

If the ones in the water were all dead then it looks like your FC was high enough

 

[Rob]

Yeah, its all cleared up. We have had a pile of rain lately, so the water level was actually up 2" over the top of the skimmer, so I was able to do a pretty thorough vacuum to waste without having to worry about lossing too much water.

Kept it at shock level through until now, and am going to let it start dropping, no sign of them.