I left for 10 days without realizing the pump schedule and the chlorine tabs were gone. I do have a salt water generator, but since my CYA levels were low (new water at the beginning of the year), I went with the tabs for a while to build up the CYA. I came back to a dark green pool, so I've been SLAM-ing for about one week. I had Leslie's run their free water tests the other day because I ran out of reagent, and incidentally found that as of two days ago, my phosphates were at 2124ppm -- expected to be high after the mass murder of algae that took place this week.
The new reagent arrived a few hours ago, and I verified that the free chlorine levels were at 22 while the combined chlorine were 0.5. (FAS/DPD test from Taylor). I had to fly a bit blind while the reaget was getting delivered.
Above ground pool just under 5000 gallons, filter media is fuzzy balls -- they have served me well so far. Pool is covered with a solar cover, except fpr brushing. Vacuuming for a few hours each morning.
Over the last few days, I'm stuck on a cycle where water seems clear -- just a touch shy of "crystal clear". Every morning, i find some fine muddy brown dust lines on the bottom of the pool -- so I run the vacuum, but then it restarts the next morning. I seem to kill as many algae as the phosphate feeds at this point, or the remains of the algaes are simply floating in the water and not filtered out.
1. At what point does it make sense to use some phosphate neutralizer (Orenda PR-10000 was sugested in a blog on the PFP site)? And *does* it?
2. Fuzzy balls don;t rinse very well in the filter itself. I'm about ready to throw them in a hot washer to make sure the junk is not coming back from there. They don;t add enough resistance to impact the pressure gauge, so it's always a guess if they are clean or not. But since I operate with a low power Intex pump, they were a good addition to be able to run a much bigger filter without impacting the flow.
I guess I need some help on how to finish the SLAM cycle -- even if it is "clean the filter and be patient!".
The new reagent arrived a few hours ago, and I verified that the free chlorine levels were at 22 while the combined chlorine were 0.5. (FAS/DPD test from Taylor). I had to fly a bit blind while the reaget was getting delivered.
Above ground pool just under 5000 gallons, filter media is fuzzy balls -- they have served me well so far. Pool is covered with a solar cover, except fpr brushing. Vacuuming for a few hours each morning.
Over the last few days, I'm stuck on a cycle where water seems clear -- just a touch shy of "crystal clear". Every morning, i find some fine muddy brown dust lines on the bottom of the pool -- so I run the vacuum, but then it restarts the next morning. I seem to kill as many algae as the phosphate feeds at this point, or the remains of the algaes are simply floating in the water and not filtered out.
1. At what point does it make sense to use some phosphate neutralizer (Orenda PR-10000 was sugested in a blog on the PFP site)? And *does* it?
2. Fuzzy balls don;t rinse very well in the filter itself. I'm about ready to throw them in a hot washer to make sure the junk is not coming back from there. They don;t add enough resistance to impact the pressure gauge, so it's always a guess if they are clean or not. But since I operate with a low power Intex pump, they were a good addition to be able to run a much bigger filter without impacting the flow.
I guess I need some help on how to finish the SLAM cycle -- even if it is "clean the filter and be patient!".

Last edited: