Hello everyone, I'm fairly new to having a pool and recently we went ahead and got ourselves a round Bestway 12ft x 30in above ground pool holding about 1718 gallons. I've been using calculators to help add the chemicals I need into the pool and for the stabilizer I went with the liquid option and came up to about 30 fl oz to reach 50ppm. I cleaned out my filter and added that amount and then eventually added in about a cup of liquid chlorine which on the bottle it says its 10% sodium hypochlorite. The problem comes about the next day I test my CYA and I'm able to see the black dot the whole time despite the test tube being filled to the top and my chlorine also testing 0 despite putting in chlorine the day before, I did another test the next day and it was looking about the same result but as I got to the very top of the tube to the point of it overflowing I was finally not able to see the black dot but that would only equal to around 30ppm of stabilizer but the amount I put in should have given me 50ppm, but then a few days after I test CYA levels again and its back to seeing the black dot the whole time.At this point I figured maybe I was having something grow in my pool taking away the stabilizer so I decided I would now attempt to re add more stabilizer and shock the pool afterwards as well with 20 oz of the same liquid chlorine. As for my PH levels only about two times have I had to lower it from the 7.8-8 level to 7.4 and its been around 7.4 consistently. I would like to know if I'm doing something wrong, I did talk to someone from a pool shop near me and they suggested that even if my stabilizer is liquid it can take a week to get a CYA reading and also told me that liquid chlorine will only last for 24 hrs since its un-stabilized.
No CYA reading or chlorine
- Thread starter Rickjaymes
- Start date
Hi, welcome to TFP! Did you shake up the bottle of stabilizer before adding it to the pool? Liquid stabilizer can seperate and have all the solids on the bottom of the container. Liquid stabilizer should show up within 24 hours since there is no waiting for it to dissolve.
Thanks you for the welcome! Yes I did shake the bottle, made sure the shake it up before throwing it into the pool. Thats what I thought liquid stabilizer would have done which left me confused when the guy at the pool store said its still a week to show up.
Welcome to TFP !!! Make yourself at home but please go easy on the couches. 
does your chlorine hold at all ?
have a read here and let us know if it looks similar to what you’re experiencing
www.troublefreepool.com
does your chlorine hold at all ?
have a read here and let us know if it looks similar to what you’re experiencing
Ammonia - Further Reading
www.troublefreepool.com
I make no promise to going easy on the couches but i'll try. My chlorine holds for a bit it's just the very next day it just reads zero. I recently just today tested the CYA level again and just as before I filled the tube all the way to the top until I was not able to see the black dot.Welcome to TFP !!! Make yourself at home but please go easy on the couches. View attachment 365164
does your chlorine hold at all ?
have a read here and let us know if it looks similar to what you’re experiencing
Ammonia - Further Reading
Get an ammonia kit as listed in the article above. They are pretty cheap and will let you know. Usually that’s about the only thing that will continually eat CYA, or else CYA wouldn’t be so miserable to get rid of. Cuz the Ammonia is worse to deal with.
I can definitely give it a try, hopefully it helps steer me in the right direction to fixing this problem.
Actually, you don't have to buy an ammonia kit. Just add enough liquid chlorine to reach 10 ppm then let the pump run for 15 minutes and test the FC level. If you have lost 5 or more ppm add enough liquid chlorine to boost it back up to 10ppm again, run the pump and retest in 15 minutes. Keep the cycle of dosing, circulating, and testing going until the chlorine starts to hold. If you have ammonia you will loose a lot of chlorine quickly until the ammonia is eradicated by high doses of chlorine. You can use the pool calculator to determine how much chlorine you need to reach 10ppm in your pool.PoolMath
CraigChing
Gold Supporter
- Jun 15, 2019
- 202
- Pool Size
- 22000
- Surface
- Vinyl
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
When did you fill your pool? You said recently, but how recently? It’s hard to believe you’d have ammonia in a newly filled pool unless something was added that had ammonia.
If you do the 15 minute cycle I described in my post and you don't lose much FC, then you need to get a different batch of CYA and put it in the pool.
I can give this a shot as well, I dont have anything to test the FC at the moment but I did order something to test it and its on its way, as for a bit of an update I did switch over for the time being to a 3" 4-in-1 multi purpose tab 94.05% Trichloro-S-Trizinetrione just to try it out, I do plan on switching back to liquid bleach after a week because the guy at the pool store suggested I use these tabs weekly over the liquid chlorine but I have heard the risks that come with using these multi purpose tabs especially with it being stabilized already so it would also be adding to my cya levels.
It would have been about 1 month now since I filled up the pool now.
Read the ingredients and make sure one of them is not copper. If the label doesn't tell you what the other ingredients are, search for the material safety data sheet on that product. You want to make sure you are not putting anything in the water that could lead to another problem.
Sorry for the week absence but I am back with some readings on my pool. I went ahead and did the FC loss test on Monday night. I attached a chart that has the times and my results from them. As for today I did another FC test and the result was 2.5ppm. I apologize for the lighting in these pictures because these tests were conducted at night because its just the only time of the day I'm available to do so due to work. I have not added any stabilizer since the last shock that I mentioned in my earlier post. My CYA readings still seem to be around the 30 ppm mark once its almost overflowing. I also attached pictures of the CYA test, I hope the pictures explain better what I'm seeing. As for my total chlorine I'm having a hard time reading the number on them since the range from 2 to 5 look somewhat the same in the color range of yellow no matter what lighting I put it in. I also added a picture of that below. Is there another test kit someone can recommend for clearer results because I'm having difficulties reading this one. I have heard of another test for combined chlorine which involves reagent 003 where its similar to the FC testing. I do see that it was mentioned that it could be my CYA batch that is bad and I have not gotten around to testing that, is there any way that it could be tested in a bucket perhaps to see if it is the CYA batch itself?
Attachments
TexEdmond
Gold Supporter
- Jun 16, 2021
- 661
- Pool Size
- 25500
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
"Yo man, Rick really needs some help."
"We DID just help him..."
we recommend the DPD powder drop test kit for FC. At any significant FC level you'll need to max out the yellow chlorine block test, so if you did it at all it'd just be a daily thing to save test reagents and make sure you hadn't fallen below 5ppm FC.
Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Taylor-K-1515-FAS-DPD-Chlorine-75oz/dp/B003V4YZEO/
Do you have a recommended test kit? I notice you have CYA and a comparator block, just wondering what you had in the way of DPD reagents. That's how we check higher levels of FC and also CC.
I have been using this test kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083X6DCM9 then I bought https://www.amazon.com/Taylor-Replacement-Reagent-FAS-DPD-Refill/dp/B00QRI2UCA and have been using this to test my FC. I am looking at https://www.amazon.com/TAYLOR-TECHNOLOGIES-INC-R-0003-C-Reagent/dp/B0002IXIKY to supplement my other FAS DPD reagents to test combined chlorine.
Perfect !! We need those tests to have good data. We can always get to the bottom of it with good data. Many members attempt a SLAM without them and never quite get it done, leading to several rounds.
Hey guys bit of an update. So I ended up doing that combined chlorine test 2 days ago and my results were 0 combined chlorine so I went ahead and shocked the pool to 10 ppm FC then when it lowered to 5 FC yesterday I added in stabilizer to reach about 50ppm. Today I tested the CYA levels and its around 50ppm and the chlorine is still at 5 so I think things may be solved for now.Thanks for all the helpful advice everyone!