Eric and Jarred talk about "black algae", which is technically a cyanobacteria. They cover what black algae is, and what you can do to remove it and prevent it from coming back.
00:00 - Introduction
02-54 - Black Algae is actually cyanobacteria
06:02 - To have black algae, it has to be transmitted from elsewhere
08:24 - Black algae is protected by a non-living organic shield
12:48 - Softening the shield
15:43 - Black algae removal procedure
17:18 - Cleaning up afterward
19:26 - No need to superchlorinate
22:30 - Killing the root of the bacteria
24:31 - How to prevent black algae
117. Black Algae
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: First of all, Jarred, I hear the kids in the background. It sounds like you're back from your vacation on the Disney cruise. How did it go?
[00:00:06] Jarred Morgan: The cruise was absolutely fabulous. And there's just something about experiencing traveling the world with your children and all they want to do is sit on the boat and eat pizza and swim in the tiny pools. It's really gratifying as a parent.
[00:00:25] Eric Knight: I'm sure it is. Instead of seeing the Vatican and the Sistine chapel. They want extra ketchup with their fries on the boat.
[00:00:32] Jarred Morgan: Bingo. And not only that, it is summertime here. And so I've already went through an episode with the boys fighting over who's playing the Wii next. And then, uh, one of them choked the other. My daughter's staying the night at her friend's house. I actually walked across the street to get some peace and quiet to do this episode.
[00:00:51] But then Harold was over there and he was being loud.
[00:00:54] Eric Knight: That's even louder.
[00:00:55] Jarred Morgan: It's way louder. So then I decided to say, you know what? We're in the pool industry. I office out of my home. We're just going to own it. I have kids. They're loud, it's summer.
[00:01:04] Eric Knight: We're going to do it.
[00:01:05] Jarred Morgan: Sorry.
[00:01:06] Eric Knight: We got to do it. Okay. Well, guess what? We're doing a topic that you have never wanted to cover before. You've never let me cover it. We've never been able to publish it until we were acquired by HASA. And that's because HASA makes a EPA registered sanitizer. And it's called chlorine. And now we can talk about a question that we get frequently and I can see you puckering right now, although this will not be recorded on video.
[00:01:30] Jarred, in this episode, we need to talk about black algae.
[00:01:34] Jarred Morgan: I can't wait and I'm just going to plead ignorant here because I know Not a whole lot about this topic. So buddy, I'm really just here to say I was here for the 157 listeners by now.
[00:01:49] Eric Knight: 156. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
[00:01:51] Jarred Morgan: I probably missed at least 30 over the past however many episodes you've done because I don't listen to them. So I don't even know how many it is.
[00:01:59] Eric Knight: If you added up all the time you've spent listening to this podcast, do you think you would be at an hour yet?
[00:02:06] Jarred Morgan: Ooh, I mean,
[00:02:07] Eric Knight: How about 10 minutes?
[00:02:09] Jarred Morgan: I want to say that I probably listened to two episodes in total.
[00:02:14] Eric Knight: That's being generous. I don't think you've ever listened to... oh, anyways, let's move on. This is episode 117 of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:02:23] It's good to have you back, Jarred. The people have been craving someone to talk to because they've been listening to me alone. Yeah, we need to talk about this because it's summertime and black algae is a real problem. And sometimes it's just a cluster of little black spots and Sometimes it takes over your pool.
[00:02:39] And I had a customer this morning call me about it, And to be honest with you, I'm just kind of sick and tired of going through the same process over and over and over again. So I figured we could do this episode, explain what it is, why it's happening, and what you could do about it. You ready to get into it?
[00:02:52] Jarred Morgan: Can't wait.
"Black algae" is actually cyanobacteria
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[00:02:54] Eric Knight: Alright, first question for you, Jarred, since you say you know very little about it. Is black algae technically... Algae?
[00:03:26] Jarred Morgan: I'm going to say no.
[00:03:29] Eric Knight: Correct. It is not a plant. Uh, some people call this blue-green algae. Uh, it's most commonly known as black algae. It looks like little black spots on the interior of a pool.
[00:03:39] It could be on a vinyl liner, it could be on fiberglass, though those are more rare. But it's usually on a cement-based finish, especially the more porous and etched it is. This stuff likes to latch on and dig down into the material. It is not a plant. It is technically a cyanobacteria.
[00:03:58] Go ahead, Jarred. You, you breathed. I feel like you had a question there.
[00:04:02] Jarred Morgan: I was going to say, Cyanobacteria just sounds very scary when you talk about swimming pools.
[00:04:08] Eric Knight: Well, I mean, you don't want any bacteria in the pool, but chlorine can easily kill bacteria. It's the best sanitizer known to man that's also safe to swim in. So it begs the question, why does this bacteria survive and spread so rapidly once you have it in a chlorinated pool?
[00:04:24] Jarred Morgan: There must be something that is giving it a resistance to the chlorine that is in your water.
[00:04:31] Eric Knight: Very good, Jarred. I know we're kind of playing and dancing around this because we at Orenda have never been able to really talk about this openly. And that's for cause. We've never made a sanitizer, but we do work for a company that does now, so we can now talk about it. And Jarred, you're just going to have to release that pucker on your face because we got to relax.
[00:04:49] Jarred Morgan: Well as long as we all understand that the chlorine in your water is, as we've always said, the best sanitizer and algaecide out there.
[00:05:01] Eric Knight: It is.
[00:05:01] Jarred Morgan: When you have great working chlorine in your pool, what problems are you really going to have? Unless some other factors are being introduced that you're having to manage. And one of these factors is black algae. My pool, for example, has probably some spots of black algae.
[00:05:18] I don't look at it that, uh, in that much detail. I have been gone for a while and I have neglected the crap out of my pool. I'm being honest. If I walked out there right now, there's probably some black algae because I have a pebble surface, it's a perfect environment for these things just to latch on to, embed, and quite honestly, black algae looks a lot like black pebbles. So I just don't really pay attention to it if it is there. But I think that the, I don't know where I was going with it, but Chlorine is great.
[00:05:48] That's the bottom line, especially when it comes to algae, algaecides, bacteria, keeping your water safe.
[00:05:54] Eric Knight: You somehow found a way to waste a whole 60 seconds of everybody's time. So yeah, thanks for that valuable insight, Jarred. You're doing big things.
To have black algae, it has to be transmitted from elsewhere
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[00:06:02] Eric Knight: Okay. So green algae or mustard algae, those spores, they come from trees, they come from grass, they come from the wind, they come from pollen. Like you can get algae introduced to your pool very easily through plant life. And decaying plant life.
[00:06:17] Black algae is different because it's not a plant. It's bacteria. So you actually have to have it introduced. One of the most common places that you can get it introduced is on bathing suits that have been in a lake. Lakes, by the way, have a lot of this. So it stands to reason that if you don't wash the swimsuit, you could introduce that to a pool. That's usually one way that it can happen.
[00:06:38] Another more rare case, but it's more common on commercial pools is kayaks. They do kayaks or they do scuba lessons. Like if you're trying to get scuba diving certifications, they bring that equipment in, it gets dumped into the pool. You've introduced it.
[00:06:54] But for the pool pro listening to this, the most common way that you're going to get it in there is your brush. If you have black algae in a pool and you are using a wire brush on it to try to get rid of it, but you don't sanitize that brush completely and you put it in another pool that doesn't have it, there's a good chance that you could get black algae in that second pool.
[00:07:16] Does that make sense, Jarred?
[00:07:17] Jarred Morgan: my kids have toys that are scattered everywhere out there in the backyard. And we have a bin or a bucket that I tend to not look in. I just chunk toys in there and there's probably once every year, year and a half where I'll decide to clean it out. And there's just muck, leaves, crap
[00:07:36] Eric Knight: Gross. Mold...
[00:07:37] Jarred Morgan: just all kinds of stuff in the bottom of that bin. And I guarantee you that there's crap all over those toys when they get thrown in and out of that pool. You name it.
[00:07:46] Eric Knight: Obviously clean that out. Hose it out, but don't hose it out near your pool. Hose it out over the lawn or something. And then take some diluted chlorine and just do a quick chlorine rinse with it, just to sanitize the inside of it.
[00:07:59] Grab a bucket of pool water if you need to. Get it out and then clean it that way. Do not use an ammonia-based cleaner. This ties back into our combined chlorine conversations because then that can get into the pool, and then you got another issue.
[00:08:12] Jarred Morgan: Well, that's what I was going to say is, if my pool is properly chlorinated and I go from one pool that has black algae to the next pool that has, say, five parts per million of chlorine. Why isn't that doing the job?
Black algae is protected by a non-living organic shield
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[00:08:24] Eric Knight: Well, it's because black algae is protected by something. I went online. I went on to it's called microbiologyresearch. org. And I looked up what this type of cyanobacteria is and they had a bunch of articles and it's very hard to nail down exactly what species, but it seems like there are several types that could be considered black algae. But generally speaking the one that survives best in water is a cyanobacteria that has, I'm going to butcher this word, a peptidoglycan layer. Or a peptidoglycan layer?
[00:08:57] Anyways, I looked that word up and I went onto sciencedirect.com and they have a whole bunch of peer-reviewed journals. I read four of them, which means I'm almost as prepared as you are for this podcast. And found out that peptidoglycans are a polysaccharide chain. And these chains link together to create a shell or a formidable protective layer.
[00:09:19] Well, here's the thing about this. I started looking into polysaccharide chains, and guess what Jarred? They are non-living and they are organic. I can see the expression just melting off of your face right now. That you are terrified of what I'm going to say next.
[00:09:37] Jarred Morgan: No, I'm not because there's no show notes. There's nothing to worry about.
[00:09:41] Eric Knight: No, there are show notes. You're just not reading them. I just didn't, I didn't even bother sending them to you anymore.
[00:09:45] Jarred Morgan: Thank you for the time saver.
[00:09:48] Eric Knight: Yeah. Well, you weren't going to read them anyway. We call this polysaccharide layer in the industry. Some people call it the head, or the helmet, or the shield of black algae.
[00:10:00] Jarred Morgan: The shell.
[00:10:01] Eric Knight: The shell yeah, it's just a polysaccharide layer. It's a polysaccharide chain, and it is non-living organic. So here's the analogy that I like to give. You know how when you cut yourself or you scrape yourself, you get a scab? And the blood dries and after a day or two, it's a hardened scab that you can, if you're a child, you pick at it. And if you're an adult, not named me, you might still pick at it as an adult? You know what I'm talking about? I'm not the only one who does that, am I?
[00:10:28] Jarred Morgan: I haven't shaved in, oh man, maybe 18 years. Couldn't tell you.
[00:10:33] Eric Knight: I'm not talking about shaving. How about just scraping your elbow on something?
[00:10:37] Jarred Morgan: Oh, picking scabs? Love picking scabs. Got one on my knee right now. Can't wait.
[00:10:41] Eric Knight: Big scab pickers.
[00:10:42] Okay. I think our audience is, we're losing them. I think we're down from 156 down to 152. And if we keep going, we're just going to trend back to double digits. But, uh, the point is it's a hardened scab. Well, that's very similar in texture to this peptidoglycan shield. So here's the analogy I'll give you.
[00:11:04] You could pick at that, and you could scrape through that and maybe cut it open enough that you could get some antibiotics through that scab. But more likely what it's going to do is if you hit it hard enough The whole thing's just going to pop off. Right? Come on, Jarred. Participate in this podcast.
[00:11:22] Jarred Morgan: I'm listening. I told you I'm an idiot when it comes to this. Go ahead.
[00:11:25] Eric Knight: Okay. You could pop off the whole scab. Well, you can do the same thing because it's a very hardened texture of this shield over black algae. It's really hard to scrape through it and create an opening so that chlorinated water can get in there and actually kill, because chlorine will easily kill the bacteria. It just can't really get through that layer very easily. It's highly chlorine resistant.
[00:11:49] Jarred Morgan: So, just by your conclusion here, the way to manage this is just expose it so chlorine can do its job.
[00:11:56] Eric Knight: That's exactly what you have to do. You need to take the shield down or take the shield off. So you could do this by just brushing. But on a pebble finish, like you're explaining, there's a lot of pebbles themselves and the textures. It's really hard to get the brush to have enough contact time on that thing to pop it off completely. So you have a much better...
[00:12:14] Jarred Morgan: And very hard to see.
[00:12:16] Eric Knight: Well it's, yeah, it's very hard to see, but it's a lot of labor. And if you have a lot of black algae, who has the time to brush thoroughly an entire commercial pool that has eight lap lanes?
[00:12:27] I've seen pools, I've been to them, that have completely black walls because this stuff spreads fast. And it's chlorine resistant, so there's not much that chlorine can do to stop it. If it's protected by this peptidoglycan layer. I think I'm just going to keep saying it differently until we land on one.
[00:12:44] Jarred Morgan: We probably should not just call it pepto. That would be too confusing.
Softening the shield weakens it
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[00:12:48] Eric Knight: No, no, we'll just call it the shield. Right? Back to the scab analogy. What if you have that hardened scab and you get in a hot tub for two hours? What does that scab feel like after two hours soaking in a hot tub?
[00:13:02] Jarred Morgan: This is a gross topic we're going down, but it feels very soft.
[00:13:04] Eric Knight: But people know it's relatable.
[00:13:06] Jarred Morgan: It's very soft.
[00:13:07] Eric Knight: Soft and mushy. And you can almost wipe it off with your hand if you take enough friction to it. That is the analogy that I want you to put in your mind, as gross as it may sound. Everybody can relate to it. You need to soften and remove that shield if you are going to be able to kill black algae with chlorine.
[00:13:26] Jarred Morgan: So my question is, is there a specific chlorine level that you'd recommend having in the water in order to accomplish this desired outcome?
[00:13:34] Eric Knight: I don't know the specifics of that. But from what I gather, at least in our experience, you don't need to shock. You just need to elevate chlorine a little bit above normal and ideally locally treat it. So what we have advised people in the past to do is purge with enzymes about a week ahead of time. Give it time. Brush like crazy. Regular chlorination. Give it a week.
[00:13:57] Then you come back, brush again, and try to remove the heads. Hopefully they're softened and broken down by then.
[00:14:03] Jarred Morgan: Would you recommend a all stainless brush there or kind of a mixed bristle stainless and nylon?
[00:14:08] Eric Knight: Wire brush.
[00:14:10] Jarred Morgan: Okay.
[00:14:10] Eric Knight: The more friction the better. You want something robust enough to actually take this off. A nylon brush is not going to be enough.
[00:14:15] Jarred Morgan: Stiff enough to really get in there. But on that note, everybody, number one, If this is a smoother finish that's relatively new, do not use a wire brush. You shouldn't be having black algae issues in a newly finished plaster, but let's just put that out there. Uh, the next thing is you want it to be really stiff, which a mixed bristle brush is stiffer than a nylon brush alone. But for this application, I agree with Eric, it's going to have to be a straight up stainless steel, really get your elbow grease in there kind of situation.
[00:14:46] Eric Knight: Correct. And if you have fiberglass, hopefully there's no porosity to that because it has a gel coat. Unless, as we'll talk about in a future episode, that gel coat has been compromised by a prolonged LSI violation, and it's got little microcracks for something to latch onto. But you can still have black algae in a relatively new fiberglass pool.
[00:15:06] But don't use a stainless steel wire brush on it because you're going to scrape that gel coat. You would probably want to use a nylon brush with a lot more friction time. You're just going to take a lot more work.
[00:15:16] Jarred Morgan: Yeah, aka don't screw up your surfaces going crazy with a stainless steel brush over and over. It'll be just like sandpaper on your pool here. Just don't go crazy.
[00:15:27] Eric Knight: Correct. Same advice applies to vinyl liner pools. Maybe use a mixed bristle brush, like a hybrid brush, but not full stainless steel. It's just going to take more work, but you can get it done.
[00:15:36] Jarred Morgan: Ideally, just try and find a stiff nylon brush. Plastic, something that's not going to puncture or scrape or do any damage.
Black algae removal procedure
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[00:15:43] Eric Knight: Right. Right. So again, the order of operations here is you have to get the shield removed so that regular chlorination can get it. What we have been recommending is purge with enzymes a week ahead of time. Brush like crazy. Okay. The affected areas, of course. Give it a week. Soften that scab. Start making it seem more like the soggy scab from the spa.
[00:16:07] Then, come back. Remove it with a thorough brushing or a long wand on a pressure washer. You can dip that into the water. That's also highly effective. So we have some customers that put an eight foot wand on it and that works really well.
[00:16:23] So whatever it takes to get those heads broken off and removed. And then spot treat chlorine. What we recommend is take liquid chlorine down a two inch PVC pipe and aim it around targeted to that area. You don't need a lot. You just... It, why not localize it if you can? Once all that chlorine is there, give it a few minutes and then brush again.
[00:16:44] We do recommend using a normal amount of PR-10,000 after. You don't need to go crazy. It's certainly not a green pool cleanup, but you might want to put a few ounces of PR down that same PVC pipe a few minutes after you brush. And all of that is to say, you're trying to take the shield out of the equation so that chlorination can do what it does, and then you clean up the debris afterward.
[00:17:07] So, I'll leave it to you all to, uh, figure out what's best for you on how you want to handle that. But that's basically what it is, and I, I kind of want you to try to recap it, Jarred.
Cleaning up afterward
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[00:17:18] Jarred Morgan: I'm not going to recap that, but then that moves us into the next phase here of this process, which is clean up preparation.
[00:17:27] Do I need to have a bucket sitting on the side of this pool or somewhere around my truck with some chlorine in it that I just throw my brushes in, throw my stuff in and let it sit in there for, I don't know, two minutes and then rinse it off?
[00:17:41] Eric Knight: Apparently you just need ten minutes. And that was from one source that I saw on sciencedirect.com of complete disinfection. So disinfection to a 5-log reduction, that's how it's defined. A 5-log reduction, meaning a 99.999% reduction of whatever the bacteria is in 10 minutes.
[00:18:00] Sanitation is defined as a 3-log reduction in 30 seconds. So that's 99.9%.
[00:18:06] Jarred Morgan: I'm assuming that has to do with the CT value here, because if you're talking...
[00:18:09] Eric Knight: Yeah, contact time, exactly.
[00:18:10] Jarred Morgan: 10 parts chlorine or 1 part chlorine, it's going to take more time with 1 part versus 10 parts. So, whatever that looks like.
[00:18:17] Eric Knight: You know, you don't want to ruin your brush by leaving it in a high concentration of chlorine either, but generally speaking, 10 minutes is not going to be enough for that.
[00:18:25] But here's what I recommend. Get a separate brush. Get a sacrificial brush that is only used for black algae remediation, and don't use it on any other pool. That's what I would suggest. Brush heads are not that expensive, and that way you know for sure you did not contaminate the next pool you went to.
[00:18:43] Jarred Morgan: Not only that, you shouldn't be using a stainless brush regularly anyways. That's a pretty specialized tool.
[00:18:50] Eric Knight: Well, I use it on my pool when I...
[00:18:53] Jarred Morgan: That's because you're trying to screw it up. Come on.
[00:18:55] Eric Knight: No, it's not because I'm... Well, I am trying to screw it up, but that's not why I'm using the brush. I'm using the brush because I have that white spot on the bottom, and I'm seeing how that changes over time. And to be honest with you, it's going away. I think SC-1000 is just cleaning it up, which is kind of crazy.
[00:19:08] Jarred Morgan: Or you're just nicely sanding it every time you brush the crap out of it with your stainless brush.
[00:19:12] Eric Knight: Yeah, that's, that's probably more accurate. You're right. I can't wait though, to start destroying this pool. It's just too hot right now, but, um, I do want to start putting trichlor on the floor and all that, which brings me to my next and almost final point.
No need to superchlorinate
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[00:19:26] Eric Knight: You don't need to superchlorinate this, although it could work. There are algaecides out there that are focused on black algae. Again, they're limited in what they can do unless you can cut through that polysaccharide wall.
[00:19:40] Jarred Morgan: You did bring up a good point there with other remedies, and one of the common remedies that I have been told, and maybe have tried in the past, is just putting a nice tab on the surface.
[00:19:54] Eric Knight: Exactly. Well, what does that tab do?
[00:19:57] Jarred Morgan: It eats the crap out of that surface. And granted, it does kill whatever you're trying to treat and your treatment area, but boy. Knowing what we know now.
[00:20:07] Eric Knight: Well, a few things going on. Good point. A tab is a 2.8 pH. Tab, meaning trichlor, for those of you listening that are maybe homeowners, a trichlor three inch tab has a very low pH. It's acidic. That alone changes things locally. Number two. It's a very high concentration of chlorine right there, which means it has a lot more oxidation power right there.
[00:20:28] You may have four parts per million of chlorine in your pool in your backyard or one or two in a commercial pool. Hopefully no more than that. That may not be enough to get through the shield. But 500 when you scrape trichlor directly on it might. And I don't know if it's 500, I made that number up, but it's really really high concentration right there.
[00:20:48] Jarred Morgan: I will also say that I have been guilty in my previous job of rubbing a trichlor tab on a smooth plaster finish, and...
[00:21:00] Eric Knight: Okay, first of all, your previous job is Orenda. Now you work for HASA, so you mean two jobs ago.
[00:21:05] Jarred Morgan: Well, I'm doing the same job. That's the same thing.
[00:21:07] Eric Knight: Oh, come on, Jarred. I'm just joking,
[00:21:10] Jarred Morgan: nothing's changed. But, when I was maintaining pools on a weekly basis... In my previous life, I may have scrubbed a little too hard with a trichlor tab on a smooth finish surface rubbed it so much that I got down to the gunite surface there and it, oof, not a good feeling or explanation. I had to give that homeowner.
[00:21:34] Eric Knight: Why'd you stop there, man? Why not go for the rebar?
[00:21:37] Jarred Morgan: I was an idiot. I'm still an idiot, and let's not get carried away here. But you don't know what you don't know. If you're trying to get rid of a problem, you're scrubbing away with either a stainless steel brush, or you're taking a tab and this is what you were told. And you're just scrubbing the crap out of it. Well, it turns out when you basically rub a rock on a rock, something's going to wear out.
[00:21:56] Eric Knight: Right, right. And so if you put trichlor that close to it, you're actually going to do a lot more damage to the surface if it's cement, vinyl, or fiberglass, then to the bacteria itself. Because you just have to kill it and it'll die in seconds once the shield is down. But you're actually going to leave permanent damage behind.
[00:22:13] Jarred Morgan: Absolutely, Eric, because when you're using a trichlor tab and scrubbing on there, and like you already said, it's a two something pH. What do you think that does to concrete?
[00:22:21] Eric Knight: It etches it. Permanently.
[00:22:22] Jarred Morgan: It just eats it. You're putting acid on there with the chlorine. You're scrubbing. It's making it nice And easy to scrub off and remove.
Killing the entire bacteria
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[00:22:30] Eric Knight: Well, right, and some people have talked to me about, hey You know, I drained and acid washed this and it came right back after we filled it up a month later! It came back.
[00:22:38] Jarred Morgan: Would you recommend a chlorine rinse at that point?
[00:22:40] Eric Knight: Yes, so that's the next note I have here. And actually my final note and then we're just going to wing it from here.
[00:22:46] If this has completely taken over your pool, this process could still work, but the labor involved may not be worth it And if it's like everywhere, it may be more practical and cost effective to drain the pool, pressure wash it, completely get this stuff removed, and then chlorine wash it.
[00:23:05] Don't chlorinate first. You're going to pressure wash to get all the heads off. You're going to remove all this stuff and clean the surface, then you're going to chlorine rinse. Then you're going to rinse it with fresh water. You can use the pressure washer afterward, but I would just use it from a further distance so you're not pressure washing again so chlorine splatters everywhere. Just rinse it off afterward.
[00:23:23] Give it a good minute. Kill everything. Get it all flushed out of the pool. Do not just let it go into the main drain and go to the filter. No, no, no. Pump it out. Get that garbage out of the pool, and then refill the pool. You should not need to acid wash unless the surface is compromised for other reasons, but...
[00:23:41] Jarred Morgan: That's a last resort in my book.
[00:23:42] Eric Knight: Yeah, it's the nuclear option. Uh, I will say, most of the customers we've dealt with, have had a lot of success with long pressure washing wands, like eight foot wands that go into the pool to knock this stuff off, wire brushes, CV-600 a full week ahead of time, and just normal chlorination.
[00:24:01] There is another thing that we have seen online where people will put it in a stocking. They'll take cal hypo or a trichlor tab in a stocking.
[00:24:08] Jarred Morgan: A sock. You call it a stocking?
[00:24:11] Eric Knight: Well, I mean, leggings or whatever. And they'll put it down into the water too close to it. That can also compromise your surface.
[00:24:17] Cal hypo, not as much. And yeah, you know what? That can work. I'm not going to say it doesn't work. Because the oxidation power, if it's that concentrated, can be enough to burn through this pepto, peptidoglycan layer.
How to prevent black algae
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[00:24:31] Eric Knight: But why not do it the proactive way? Here's the thing. The only way this stuff survives is if that peptoglycan, whatever, polysaccharide layer, that shield, can form in the first place. So here's what I will leave you with. What can you do proactively, to minimize non-living organic material in general? What can you do to maintain chlorine levels throughout the week so that this never actually takes over in your pool?
[00:25:00] The other proactive thing, as we already mentioned, If your brush has dealt with black algae, that is now your black algae brush. Do not put it in a clean pool because you are very likely to take that black algae into that new pool, and that's how it spreads.
[00:25:16] Jarred, anything you want to add or delete from this episode?
[00:25:18] Jarred Morgan: And if you're a homeowner or you're servicing a pool with kids with a nice toy bucket, hey, just make a... casual recommendation that those toys get cleaned periodically or that you keep it clean in that bucket so that you don't give this bacteria, or any bacteria for that matter, a chance to live in a nice, cozy, warm, humid environment that's causing a bunch of problems for everybody.
[00:25:43] So just have real conversations with your homeowners, have real conversations with yourself and just understand that we are imperfect people. These things are going to happen, but like Eric said, be proactive. Get ahead of it. And, uh, good luck.
[00:25:58] Eric Knight: Yes. Thank you. This has been episode 117 of the Rule Your Pool podcast.
[00:26:03] And had you told us a year ago that we would do an episode on black algae, it was verboten. Because we never had a sanitizer. We haven't been able to talk about this stuff, and we're going to be able to talk about algae a lot more openly because HASA does offer chlorine. You don't need a special algaecide to do this. They could work, but again, you need to get through that shield. So, whatever that mechanism is for you.
[00:26:24] Jarred Morgan: Well, I'm glad to be back. And hopefully we provide some value here. But if you have any questions, concerns, comments, reach out to Eric. I'm very,
[00:26:36] Eric Knight: thanks man.
[00:26:37] Jarred Morgan: I'm very hit or miss on whether or not I respond. So this, we appreciate you guys listening and thank you.
[00:26:42] Eric Knight: I want to remind the audience that we now have feedback@hasapool.com as an email. If you have HASA specific questions or concerns, email me. I get those emails, I will read them, and I will pass them up the chain as necessary. We need to hear from you. That's feedback@hasapool.Com. Uh, yeah, I don't know what the next episode is, but we have a lot to pick from. So, Jarred, thanks for being with me.
[00:27:09] Jarred Morgan: Hey, thank you.
[00:27:10] Eric Knight: Everybody, thanks. Take care.