water mold

[robinixie]

anyone ever heard of water mold? i have a white slime coating on my filter cart. the pool is crystal clear although i am still in a cholorine lock. the slime is hard to hose off--i have been told it's water mold & needs to be taken care of asap. any comments or solutions?

[chem geek]

By any chance are you using Baquacil? White water mold is frequently seen in such pools. It's less common in chlorine pools. Treating it is really hard in a Baquacil pool. In a chlorine pool, one needs to shock with a high amount of chlorine for an extended period of time as the mold is often in pipes. If it's in your filter, you should chemically treat your filter.

If you are using Baquacil, then BioGuard makes a product called SoftSwim Assist that forms chlorine dioxide in water (chlorine is incompatible with Biguanide).

[robinixie]

no i use chol. (3in. stab. pucks) and i am in a "chol lock". i have been heavily shocking since end of may. i still have a chol lock. i put 4 gal of bleach in @ 9am no fc reading. every thing else is balanced. white slime still on cart. do i use a cart cleaner on them? what about soaking them in bleach? i do have a line that runs under the pool that has never worked--i run w/ only 1 skimmer. could that be filled w/ white mold? really appreciate your comments. the first time i found the mold, it was preventing the heater from kicking on!

[Backglass]

no i use chol. (3in. stab. pucks) and i am in a "chol lock". i have been heavily shocking since end of may. i still have a chol lock. i put 4 gal of bleach in @ 9am no fc reading. every thing else is balanced. white slime still on cart. do i use a cart cleaner on them? what about soaking them in bleach? i do have a line that runs under the pool that has never worked--i run w/ only 1 skimmer. could that be filled w/ white mold? really appreciate your comments. the first time i found the mold, it was preventing the heater from kicking on!

You can only have chlorine lock through abnormally high levels of CYA (Stabalizer).

Do you know your CYA test number?

[robinixie]

the cya is @ 55. they say thats normal? I really never started having problems since i got the cart. filter. i miss being able to back-wash with my sand one.

[Backglass]

the cya is @ 55. they say thats normal? I really never started having problems since i got the cart. filter. i miss being able to back-wash with my sand one.

It's a bid high, but nothing monumental. What makes you think you have chlorine lock?

[chem geek]

What kind of test for chlorine are you using? You say you add chlorine and there is no reading. Are you using a DPD test where after 5 drops you see the intensity of the red color? If so, then this test bleaches out at high chlorine levels (> 10 ppm FC). The OTO test that after 5 drops turns various intensities of yellow does not bleach out, but the best test is FAS-DPD that uses a powder and turns pink/red and you count how many drops it takes to turn clear.

Get yourself a good test kit, the Taylor K-2006, since that has a FAS-DPD test for both Free Chlorine (FC) and Combined Chlorine (CC) and also has tests for pH, Total Alkalinity (TA), Calcium Hardness (CH) and Cyanuric Acid (CYA).

It's possible your water is just out of balance and the hard white substance is calcium carbonate. White water mold is tissue-like and falls apart easily. If your pH, CH and TA are too high, then you may be scaling or precipitating calcium carbonate.

[Guest]

i put an order in for a taylor k. i have tried the 1 part pool water w/ the 3 part tap water and still no fc reading so i believe i can rule out the strips being bleached out. i think i feel more comfortable w/ the drops for testing so i don't have to play the guessing game of color matching. i seem to remember the pool co. saying i had alot of hardness but we need to "fix" everything else first. such as the "lock". the white junk is only in the filter cart. scaling would be on walls and tiles? what do u suggest to lower the hardness? ty again

[chem geek]

I'd wait until you get your own test kit and test a full set of numbers. As for the cartridges, they can be chemically cleaned by your pool store (I would think). In the meantime, you can do the shock chlorine level now or you can do it when your cartridges are getting cleaned (you can still filter without cartridges -- it's just slightly lower head loss in pressure).

[robinixie]

hey thanks chem geek... i really am grateful for the info. from u & backglass. the 2 of u should teamup and put these pool co. to shame. i will be getting my taylor k on sat (1 week from tom) so i guess i will wait and pray that i do really have a fc reading and that the test strips were bleached out. the pool store suggests soaking cart. in cart. renew in a garbage can for 24 hrs. then replacing. i suppose i will give it a shot. i will keep on trying opposed to calling the cement truck!!! ty. happy 4th.

[Backglass]

hey thanks chem geek... i really am grateful for the info. from u & backglass. the 2 of u should teamup and put these pool co. to shame.

Aww. Chemgeek is a real pro. I'm just a fellow pool owner who has been through it before.

[chem geek]

Are you kidding me? When I first got my pool 4-1/2 years ago, I used Trichlor pucks, had them in a floating feeder that was tethered and parked itself near metal bars in the water, rusted their mountings, then when the CYA went high (which I did not know since I only had a simple OTO test kit), I couldn't keep the chlorine up fast enough and put the Trichlor pucks into the skimmer which, when the pump was off, rusted my pool thermometer (lord knows what happened to my heater!), etc. I added clarifier, algaecide, enzymes, pH Up and other products. After a year and half of this foolishness I decided to work out the pool water chemistry for myself.

We were all newbies once. Though I worked out a lot of the chemistry on my own, I also used real-world input from many, many sources, mostly on the Pool Forum to start with. Without real-world experience, all the theory is useless.

[h20 moldy]

Someone mentioned swim assist for baquacil users. I have tried a non-chlorine shock last year which finally killed it. This year after getting the green alge killed the pool was crystal clear....then the rains came and I have the biggest crop of water mold I have ever seen. I switched to Baquacil Ultra to prevent this from happening, but now it seems to have no effect.
I switched to using panty hose on the Polaris cleaner so I don't have to change the bag every 5 minutes to wash out the mold. I have put extra everything baquacil, shock, A/B shock pouches and it seems to grow faster.

To save on money, I am thinking of just switching to chlorine system for the rest of the summer...any other ideas?

[endlessly frustrated]

What an informative site! This is my first year with an above ground pool. I live in the south and have had a myriad of problems since the spring opening, and have also spent much $ on various baquacil products to treat this and that. I have had what I "thought" were fuzzy algae clusters floating at the pool bottom, which dissipate when stirred. I would vacuum the pool to waste weekly, add chemicals as instructed weekly/monthly and had no problems UNTIL my pool supplier reminded me I should shock weekly with a quart of oxidizer and add some right to the skimmer basket as well. That caused white bubbles/air to spurt from the jet return of my pump, into the pool and turned the water milky white. Since then I have shocked and re-shocked, sanitized and cannot clear the water. My oxidizer levels are also not holding steady. I can add 1 1/2 gallons one day, and the next day it's gone. Today I went back to the pool supplier and was told it was white mold that I had and that running oxidizer directly into the skimmer forced it out from the plumbing and the pump. At their recommendation, I purchased baquacil ultra start up (which are in pouches labeled step 1 and step 2), more bacquacil oxidizer, as well as bacquacil oxidizer CDX. I have followed all of their instructions regarding adding the ultra start up, the oxidizer, the oxidizer CDX. I am also told to clean the sand filter overnight tonight. This will be the third time this season (since March) that I have chemically cleaned the filter. I am extremely frustrated and not optimistic that my water will ever be clear again. Any suggestions?

[chem geek]

Perhaps someone else will have better news for you, but if you've used BioGuard SoftSwim Assist and that doesn't work for your white water/tissue mold, then I am out of suggestions other than converting to a chlorine pool. If you haven't tried the SoftSwim Assist, try that first. This product contains sodium chlorite and Dichlor which together in water form chlorine dioxide which normally kills this mold. This is only necessary in a Baquacil pool -- a chlorine pool normally doesn't get this mold and if it does, chlorine shock levels can get rid of it.

robinixie, any status on your situation? Did you get a Taylor K-2006 test kit? Can you post some numbers (FC, CC, pH, TA, CH, CYA)?

Richard