Another year, another Ammonia Nightmare

[Nagrath]

Hello Pool Experts (and especially Chem Geek!)
You all have helped me in the past; for the last 3 seasons I have been experiencing the same issue Richard has described in many posts, having ammonia in the pool at startup and requiring super-super-chlorination to remove it. This year, I am at wits end. I have a 23,500 gallon vinyl pool; I use stabilized chlorine tabs for chlorination. I realize these have CYA in them, but my CYA almost always reads zero (strips) or close to it (test with the dot ). This year, we had a VERY mild winter; opened the pool to find it basically clear, but a little green. PH was high (~8.5) so I used Muriatic Acid to bring it down to ~7.5. Ran an ammonia test--maxed out the test at 8ppm. Oh, and there was a delightful bloated mouse carcass in the pool as well. I shocked with 12 gallons of 12% liquid chlorine. A couple hours after doing that, my FC was 1ppm, CC was about 14ppm.
Pool also has become cloudy white. I have since added an additional 24 gallons of 12% chlorine, in 3 batches of 8 bottles each. At last test, my CC was up to about 24ppm, FC was no higher than about 1-1.5ppm. pH has dropped to 6.8. This seems insane! Is there anything else I can do besides pouring more and more bleach into the pool? In previous years I have not needed more than 12 bottles or so. HELP!

Thanks for any help you can offer!
John

[nagrath]

Update-
Added 8 more gallons; Ammonia/CC dropped to zero, FC at 10. Woo hoo! Now what to do about the cloudiness? Water looks kind of cloudy, but whitish, not in any way colored; I have a cartridge filter, with new cartridges this season. Should I just use a clarifier? Or might it be something else?

John