Weird Black stuff floating on surface of water in skimmer

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everytuesday

Member
Aug 7, 2022
13
Georgia
Hey TFP,

Long time reader first time poster here. I'm hoping to try and get some help figuring out what the heck is in my skimmer. I've got Chlorine and PH in a good place and I recently shocked my salt water pool. I've attached a picture of what I'm seeing every morning I get out to check the skimmers. I have 2 skimmers and one of them seems to collect these small black particles on the surface of the water. In the last picture of my pool, the skimmer I'm talking about is in the bottom left corner. The black stuff is hard to scoop up with my small green fish net I use. They don't want to seem to get very wet. When I do scoop them out they seem to clump up in the fish net and almost look powdery. Over all pool water looks decent to me, however I've only owned my pool for 1.5 years now and am learning along the way. Any advice is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Spencer

pool_1.jpg
pool_2.jpg
pool_3.jpg
 
Hi @YippeeSkippy! Thanks for the suggestion, however I'm skeptical that it could be frog eggs just because when I google frog eggs they don't totally match up but I could be wrong too lol. Yes correct this happens every day. I go out in the morning, clear out the skimmer of this black stuff, and then do it all over again the next day. I did however go out late tonight before the pool equipment turned on to suck everything into the skimmers, and noticed those black things had already come back in less than 24 hrs. I took a couple pics to look at. You can see they are in small groups and are floating on the surface of the water. When I try to touch them, they do not want to stick to my finger and kind of break apart and spread out. I did notice them all around the pool though which was surprising. Does algae form like this? I always thought algae grew on surfaces underwater like along the floor and walls....

Anyways thanks again!

black-spotsjpg.jpg
 
Pretty hard to identify positively. Filter them out. I would suggest skimmer socks which will keep 95% of them out of your filter and run your pump 24/7 'til they are gone..

Be aggressive with the fix and inquisitive as to the cause.
 
@duraleigh Thanks for the help. I'll post another pic once the sock picks up the stuff and see if we can make any progress on identifying this stuff. In the meantime I'm going to read through more of the "maintaining pool water" info you have on the site again. Oh one other thing - I've noticed there are new leaks on some of the pool equipment and someone is supposed to come out today and look at the pumps etc. I'll see if they find anything and post anything they mention.

Thank you so much!
 
A great first step would be to post the water test results for people to slider advice. Lots of newcomers drop in saying “things look great and are in the right range” it as you can imagine there can be a big difference in what is considered acceptable. TFP has a very different perspective and it has worked well for me.

Totally uninformed opinion here so take it for what it’s worth. The water looks a bit green in the picture. Is there enough chlorine in the water?
 
Hi @Bperry - Totally agree. I am a believer of the TFP method for sure. I started using it for my hot tub about 8 months ago from a post by @Nitro and it not only was cheaper but easy and I haven't had a problem since. So probly a good idea to learn what the process is for my salt water pool now lol.

FC - 8.5 (I shocked the pool 4 days ago.)
pH - 7.6
CC - 0
TA - 70
Salt - 3300
CH - 110
CYA - 0


I'm using a Taylor k-2006 Test Kit when I tested this morning.

I agree, the pool has always had a green tint to it for some reason. I never remember seeing it the super blue color that non-salt water pools have in other neighborhoods. I have noticed that once I started brushing the bottom of the pool in the deep end with my nylon brush that the green tint is starting to go away in some areas leaving "streaks". I'm assuming from my brushing, which I've started doing daily for about 20 min the last 4 days. I'm wondering if I should be using a steel brush instead since my pool is covered with like a textured stone/pebble surface. Not entirely sure what to call it because its not super smooth. There is a good possibility that the pool hasn't been cleaned since the house was built in 2017, for context I bought the house in 2020. I also run a pool robot vacuum almost daily, I have the dolphin premier.

Any thing that can help me I am all ears for, thanks again for any future help!
Spencer
 
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Definitely test for CH & CYA. Your FC will be based off of CYA and CH is important for plaster pools from what I understand & important as far as calcium buildup.
 

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everytuesday said:
Ok updated my post with the tests. CH was 110 and cya didn’t register on the kit so it’s less than 30 and it was barely cloudy so I’m guessing it’s probably 0
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Don’t add any assuming it’s zero. Add assuming it’s 20ppm and you won’t be surprised. Easier to add a bit more than overshoot.
 
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YippeeSkippy said:
Hey there Spencer.... is this a daily occurrence? I suspect they're frog eggs. Do you have a lot of frogs around you? Got a FrogLog in the pool to help frogs and other small pests get out?

Maddie :flower:
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@duraleigh I think I figured out what they are - Spring Tail Bugs, and a lot of them. Do you happen to know how to get rid of them? I've shocked my pool twice in the last 30 days and they're still there. However my pool also isn't balanced yet, my CYA is really low or zero. I've ordered some products to balance it out, but they won't be here for a few days....Thanks for any help.
 
IceShadow said:
Great! I see your results up-thread - once you get the CYA in, we can deal with doing an Overnight Chlorine Loss Test and seeing what we can do about any tiny algae in the water the bugs may be feeding on. :)
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Well I added 30+ lbs of product to increase CYA and CH last weekend been monitoring it this week. I'm currently sitting at
CYA: 70
CH: 250
PH:7.4
FC:7
CC:0
TA:70

I've hit a snag though, I've tried to do the Chlorine Overnight test twice now. Each time I've ended up with a higher amount of Chlorine in the morning than at night. I turned my chlorinator to 0% and made sure the pool equipment is running before doing each test. Maybe it's still producing chlorine at some point even though I've set it to 0%? I'm out of regent r-0870 powder so I have to wait until Sat to try the test again. I guess this time I'll completely disable the chlorinator.

Any ideas or if you've had a similar experience?

Cheers,
Spencer
 
IceShadow said:
How much more? If it’s small enough it could be testing error.
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First night I registered FC: as 8 - tested in the morning and registered 10, second night I tested and got FC:5 and this morning I tested again with FC being 7. So Im sure it could be user error lol ,but the directions aren't that complicated + I've watched a few youtube videos explaining it so. I'll wait for the new supply to arrive and then try it again. I just thought of this as I was typing, I usually fill the container with water up to 10ml, and then count the drops and multiply by .5, perhaps I should fill to 25ml for a more accurate reading and multiply my drops by .2.

Thanks again @IceShadow
 

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