Q: Hey Pool Guy…I used well water to fill my 15×48 do-it-yourself pool. When I filled it, it was clear and beautiful. As soon as I plopped a chlorine tablet in the floating distributor, it turned light green. I shocked it, it turned brown. Ive used metal out products and my pool has not been clear since. My ph is high..I have ph minus for that. At this point, I’m afraid to put anything in it. What can help me clear this up?
A: If you have well water what probably happened was the chlorine caused the pH to increase just enough to cause the water to change color (high pH = flourescent/lime green) – and then additional shock pushed any dissolved metals out of solution (iron = dull green/brown).
What I would do would be to add pH- to bring the alkalinity and pH down, followed by FerriTabs to take the metal out of the water.