Pool water green

[PoolMom]

I have no idea what to do. It has been raining for 17 out of the last 23 days. My pH is great; the alkalinity is great; the stabilizer is okay; the chlorine as of two days ago was great. Took water sample to Leslies; they confirmed levels were fine. Problem is water is greener than ever before. I took Leslie's suggestion and put one quart of their algaecide into the pool. I waited four hours; then I shocked the pool, per their suggestions.

Now, three days later: I vacuumed again, but the water is worse than ever. The Ph is good, the alkalinity is good, the stabilizer is good. How do I get the water blue again? The course of treatment from Leslie's did not work. Anyone have anything else to do?

[supermom65]

I found out a couple of years ago that the best thing to do with the pool is avoid the water testing and the pool sales people. I throw in a bottle of "black magic" algaecide. Over the next 2 days I scoop out all the crap, and then after making sure all my equipment is air tight and working properly (sometimes o rings,hoses, etc. need replaced - usually check all this in the fall when I disassemble some things), I throw in a huge bottle of TURBO SHOCK while the pool is running. The next day, if I sometimes have to turbo shock it again. I use chlorine tablets and a couple of bags of shock as needed. The Ph and everything will balance out. Don't waste your money on chemicals that each work against each other. If the water is clear and I can smell a slight chlorine odor, my family swims in the pool. When I use to go to pool suppliers and spend hundreds of dollars on chemicals, my pool never cleared.

[chem geek]

Are you talking about ProTeam Mustard & Black Magic algaecide? That is sodium bromide which turns your pool into a bromine pool. This works around a high CYA level in order to kill algae, but the root of the problem is continued use of stabilized chlorine products that build up CYA that makes chlorine less effective so algae can grow faster than chlorine can kill it.

Are you talking about (HTH) Prolife Turbo Shock? This is Cal-Hypo which is decent for shocking except that for every 10 ppm Free Chlorine (FC) that it adds, it also increases Calcium Hardness (CH) by 7 ppm. So it's OK for vinyl pools that are already low in CH, but for plaster pools that are likely to be already saturated with calcium carbonate, increasing CH can cloud the water and if overused then scaling can occur. To avoid increasing either CYA or CH, one can use chlorinating liquid or 6% bleach.

As for the original poster (PoolMom), if the green is a clear green as opposed to cloudy or darker green of algae, then the problem could be copper in the pool, especially if you used a copper-based algaecide. See if there is a Free Chlorine (FC) drop overnight of more than 1 ppm. If there is, then you probably have algae and need to shock the pool by following what it says to do in Defeating Algae. If it's copper in the water, then you need to dilute the water and add a metal sequestrant as well.