Bromine Pool, Algae Trouble

BryanPool

New member
May 19, 2025
1
Lewis Center, OH
Pool Size
20000
Surface
Vinyl
Chlorine
Liquid Chlorine
Hi: we’re having a heck of a time this year with green water. Opened the pool four weeks ago, and water clarity improved over two days. From there it’s been downhill - I think we didn’t follow some confusing instructions correctly, and I think two pool companies have us doing things that aren’t sequenced well. We started a SLAM yesterday, with alkalinity, pH etc in the proper range for SLAM - but after about 35 hours (added liquid shock 4x yesterday),we cannot get the FC much above 5 - but we’re also trying to gauge numbers on everything off of test strips. Ordered a Taylor kit - arriving tomorrow.
I’m thinking we start over when the test kit arrives. (I know strips are mostly unreliable - we were just trying to save some money which apparently was stupid). Mainly I can’t get a good cya reading, and pH is now completely unreadable on a test strip because of so much chlorine. So using Pool Math isn’t helpful when I don’t have great cya readings in particular to SLAM.

All that to say: should I continue adding chlorine today until test kit arrives tomorrow, so I don’t waste the work we’ve done? Or should I try to raise alkalinity with baking soda since it bottomed out, while we wait for the test kit?
I should say while we can’t see the bottom, there is no debris there. We have vacuumed to waste, run our robot (will do that again today) with little or no algae or debris evident. Scrub sides 1-2 times per day.

Also, it’s a bromine pool and bromine is registering very high. Should I turn its distribution off?

Help. 😊
 
From...


SLAMing your pool will be roughly the same as with chlorine, you will just target 20 ppm Br level instead of 10 FC. Use pool math and divide your numbers bromine by 2 in the current FC and target FC places to figure out how much bleach to add to keep yourself at SLAM level. Be careful of going over 20 Br since it is unstabilized. Other than that follow the directions until you get things clear. When you get the water clear you can run the OCLT with 2 ppm Br instead of 1 ppm FC as your overnight loss limit.

@Donldson @JoyfulNoise may be helpful.