Terry schools Eric and Jarred on green and yellow algae, based on research and wisdom he has obtained experientially. Jarred piles on and complains about brushing...or something.
00:00 - Introduction
01:53 - 30,000+ species of algae exist
07:45 - Planktonic and Filimentous algae types
09:48 - Organic slime protects algae
10:43 - Brushing helps prevent algae
13:44 - Why we advise against using algaecide products
14:48 - Why algae can have different colors
16:11 - How to treat a pool with algae
17:58 - How to prevent algae
21:11 - How much chlorine is needed with CYA?
27:17 - Conclusion. Thanks for listening!
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118. Green and Yellow (Mustard) Algae (w/ Terry Arko)
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Terry, thanks for being back on the show.
[00:00:02] Terry Arko: Oh yeah. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here again.
[00:00:04] Eric Knight: Yeah,
[00:00:05] Terry Arko: I'm liking this.
[00:00:06] Jarred Morgan: Eric, no thanks for having me. I did not want to be here, but I was included on this request. So here we are, buddy. Let's do this.
[00:00:13] Eric Knight: You know what? After giving you heart palpitations from the last topic, since we've never really been able to talk about algae at Orenda, Now we can. Because HASA does have chlorine.
[00:00:23] So we are going to cover the questions we've been getting for years, but now we're going to actually talk about it. In the last episode, we talked about black algae. Which, as you now know, is not technically algae. It is a cyanobacteria. What we're talking about today are green and yellow algae or mustard algae.
[00:00:40] These are technically algae. They are plant-like, although, Terry, as we'll discuss, they're not full plants because they don't necessarily have roots. But some do, some don't. It's kind of this weird, nebulous topic. So we're going to get into that. Terry, is there anything you want to add before we get into this?
[00:00:58] Terry Arko: You talked about the whole root thing. And I know a lot of times you hear people say that they have black algae rooted into their pool or the roots are in their pool. But it's really not roots. What black algae does is black algae burrows into plaster. So I think we could use that word burrow. Yes. As a bacteria.
[00:01:15] Eric Knight: Okay. And now green and yellow algae, they don't have roots at all. But yet they are more of a plant than a bacteria.
[00:01:22] Terry Arko: Yeah. Yeah. And we can get into that when we talk about yellow, how that happens, I think.
[00:01:27] Eric Knight: Okay, perfect. Well, episode 118, let's do it.
[00:01:32]
30,000+ algae species exist
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[00:01:53] Eric Knight: So I've done some homework and I found out of the over 30,000 species of algae that exist, there are not that many types that can actually survive in a pool. But there are several different types of green and a handful of yellow. Those are the most common types we see. And most people in the industry refer to yellow algae as mustard algae. So Terry, which one would you prefer to talk about first?
[00:02:15] Terry Arko: Green algae is probably the most common that you're going to see in a pool. And typically with green algae, it's just a matter of maintenance or a lack of maintenance. Chlorine levels go down.
[00:02:26] Probably the first and easiest form of algae that's going to multiply and grow is going to be green. First of all, algae is omnipresent everywhere. And particularly that green form in a spore is, I mean, it's in the soil, it's in the air, it's on trees, it's on leaves, sticks. You know, that stuff gets blown in there and the spores are introduced into the water.
[00:02:47] Chlorine is good at resisting that from doing much of anything. But when the chlorine levels start to go down, the thing to keep in mind is pretty much every nutrient that green algae needs is present in your pool water. The algae has everything it needs to start to grow and the green algae is going to be the most prolific that you're going to see.
[00:03:05] Jarred Morgan: I have a question.
[00:03:06] Eric Knight: Oh, wow. Okay. Jarred engaging early on. Look at this.
[00:03:09] Jarred Morgan: I only have three times I can interject here. And so I'm going to use one of them.
[00:03:13] Terry Arko: Number one.
[00:03:14] Jarred Morgan: We keep saying green algae, yellow algae, and so forth. When I think of algae, when I was maintaining pools and whatnot, you'd go in there and always be, it looked like yellow algae in the corners, on the steps, in the little nooks and crannies.
[00:03:29] How can we make color distinctions to determine the types of algae? Cause I know you're referencing green algae, but it looks kind of yellow. And I guess it depends on a lot of factors.
[00:03:39] Eric Knight: Well, we can get into that. I'd defer to Terry on that answer before I gave you mine.
[00:03:43] Terry Arko: So when we talk green algae, just common green algae, that's really like the forest green lake, green that you would recognize. I think that there can be blends as well. You can have mustard and you can have some green. And you can have, you know, mustard algaes growing in the pool and you have some green that's growing with it or over it and you might see that. And so it looks more like a yellow greenish color, maybe?
[00:04:11] You certainly can have that and I've seen that. I mean, I did pools for a long time where you, we'd have both. The thing is, when we say green's the most common and your experience, experientially speaking,
[00:04:22] Eric Knight: Oh God.
[00:04:22] Terry Arko: Was there's that experientially,
[00:04:25] Eric Knight: Terry, tell them what you did to me after the last podcast when I said that that's not a real word. Get this.
[00:04:30] Terry Arko: I, yeah. I mean, you kind of scared me cause then I thought maybe it wasn't a real word. So I had to look it up. Cause I use that word experientially, and Eric called me on it. So not a real word. And I said, Oh man, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting old and I'm forgetting things, but I looked it up.
[00:04:43] Looked it up in the dictionary. You know, that's the way you check things. And there it was experiential and experientially.
[00:04:49] Eric Knight: He screenshots it and sends it to me.
[00:04:51] Jarred Morgan: Well, not just that Terry's so genuine and authentic. He had to go find an actual dictionary to look this word up people.
[00:04:59] Terry Arko: And I did,
[00:05:00] Eric Knight: it wasn't urban dictionary. It was a real thing and I was wrong. So Terry, thanks for punching that right back in my face. I appreciate you.
[00:05:06] Terry Arko: So I think when we say green is the most common, I think it's more so maybe green is the easiest to grow. But to your point, Jarred, you can have a lot of pools and it can almost seem that the mustard's more common because you see it in certain pools and especially in pools that have rough surfaces, corners, cracks, things like that, where that's going to burrow and it's going to be pretty common. And the reason it seems more common I think is because yellow algae is a whole heck of a lot harder to get rid of than green.
[00:05:39] You know, you can shock and green's gone. You can shock yellow and I mean, it keeps coming back. It's real hard to get rid of.
[00:05:46] Jarred Morgan: I guess I was going to lead to my next question, to follow up on the color topic real quick is the appearance of the shade or color of algae you're looking at, I guess would depend on the color of your surface as well?
[00:05:59] Terry Arko: That's true as well.
[00:06:00] Jarred Morgan: Yeah. I have a darker color surface. So a green algae or yellow algae might present itself as more of a different shade of green or yellow or brownish at times. But moving on from that, are there places that green algae is more likely to grow or yellow algae is likely to grow?
[00:06:17] Because I have a experience with yellow algae growing and it seems to me that it's always growing on the shade side of a wall.
[00:06:24] Eric Knight: Well, when you say places, do you mean within a pool or regionally across the country?
[00:06:28] Jarred Morgan: Within the pool, within the water. Yeah. Well, in general.
[00:06:32] Eric Knight: The answer is yes. Most often you will see mustard algae on the shady side of your pool on walls.
[00:06:39] You'll see them in corners, but you don't usually see mustard algae on the floor that gets a lot of sunlight. So you're going to see it in the parts of the pool that do not get a lot of sunlight. For some reason, this species prefers shade. Green algae is all over the place because there are so many different types.
[00:06:53] Terry Arko: That's another misperception. You hear that algae grows or it proliferates because of photosynthesis. Because it's able to take light, and the light is able to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon, which is glucose. So basically it's, they're like these little candy factories. You know, they can take light and turn it into candy bars.
[00:07:16] Jarred Morgan: Let's just say science.
[00:07:18] Terry Arko: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:07:18] Eric Knight: I love that.
[00:07:19] Terry Arko: And so there's kind of that misnomer of, well, algae can't grow in the shade. But that's not really true. I mean, any type of algae that it is, it's always going to seek its comfort zone.
[00:07:30] And with yellow algae in particular, it tends to like the shade, but it also tends to like rough areas. And if you upset either one of those, then yellow algae is not going to be real prolific as a result of that.
Planktonic and Filimentous algae types
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[00:07:45] Eric Knight: Well, Terry, I'm glad you brought that up because according to this source that I read, there's enough light in simple refraction of sunlight in the water for mustard algae. It doesn't need a lot of sunlight. Green algae uses a lot more, but green algae also reproduces a lot faster. Mustard algae doesn't produce as fast. Do I have the exact numbers on this? No.
[00:08:04] I just did a little bit of homework. I'm not trying to be a doctor on this. But you are absolutely correct. It is harder to get rid of mustard algae and that has to do with the structure of the cell walls.
[00:08:13] So let's take a step back here and there's really two types that you're going to see in pools. And that is planktonic algae and filamentous algae.
[00:08:26] Planktonic would be floating around in the water, single celled organisms duplicating. Sunlight accelerates this, and if given the right conditions, these green algae cells can reproduce every three to six hours if the water is warm enough. Now in a chlorinated environment, it may not be that fast, but it depends because as you mentioned earlier, Terry, when your chlorine gets low enough, what it really is, is it's a race.
[00:08:51] Sanitation is a race between the killing speed of your sanitizer and the growth and reproduction rate of the contaminant. If you are reproducing faster than the chlorine can keep up, you will be able to reproduce. This is where the cyanuric acid gets into it, which we'll get into in a little bit. If your chlorine is too slow to keep up, it's going to reproduce.
[00:09:09] But let's just say you had no chlorine. Let's say it's a pond. This algae can reproduce every three to six hours.
[00:09:15] Terry Arko: That's correct. So you can have millions and millions of algae within a few days.
[00:09:20] Eric Knight: Exactly right. It can take over very quickly. That's planktonic. Then there's filamentous. And this would be more of the mustard algae. Now, granted, there are also green types that are filamentous and filaments. Think of...
[00:09:31] Terry Arko: Yeah, you have clinging green algae that grows on walls.
[00:09:34] Eric Knight: Absolutely. So these things cling to things. Walls, surfaces, et cetera. And they look microscopically more like hairs. And they web together and they create mats of stuff and you can feel them and they're textured.
Organic slime protects algae
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[00:09:48] Eric Knight: So if you've ever touched green algae with your hand, you are feeling filamentous green algae, and it was protected by a slime. That slime is comprised of cellulose, polysaccharides, and proteins. In other words, the technical term is a biofilm. And this is a very hot button word that we've never been able to talk publicly at Orenda. But again, now that we're HASA, we can start getting into these topics that are big questions, certainly for the CDC and the Model Aquatic Health Code.
[00:10:17] Biofilms protect things from chlorine and other sanitizers. Whatever those things are. Just imagine a web of, I don't know, Terry, is the word slime or snot appropriate for this?
[00:10:29] Terry Arko: Yeah. It's actually a type of a plaque. It's like plaque that forms on your teeth. Well, I mean, you can get slimy plaque on your teeth. Like two, three days, you don't brush your teeth, you know how they feel? And then that will harden and so forth, but it is a form of a plaque.
Brushing helps prevent algae
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[00:10:43] Terry Arko: So since we're talking about teeth. You know, I'll just interject this here now. One of the number one preventers of algae is simply brushing. Like just doing some regular routine brushing, you know, and that's where I'd see a lot of trouble when I did pools. And Jarred, I don't know about you, but I know any pools that I walked in and took over where the tech just felt like he didn't need to brush on a particular day. Those are the pools where you're going to see more yellow and more of the filamentous algae growth for sure.
[00:11:13] Eric Knight: That's correct.
[00:11:13] Jarred Morgan: It's one of the biggest frustrations I have had. Is when I walk into a backyard and you see that you don't see it really, right? Like in my pool, for example. When I go out there occasionally, and I brush the walls and the steps and I just all of a sudden see just plumes of this algae and stuff.
[00:11:33] I'm like, man. I'm just thinking to my head. It is the easiest thing in the world just to quickly hit that with a brush on a weekly basis just to keep these algae spores and things off the walls and in the water so that the chlorine can do its job. And when you let that stuff go, boy, do you pay for it down the road?
[00:11:52] Terry Arko: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Eric Knight: Well, think about what you're doing. You're releasing... and again, this is filamentous algae you're talking about because the planktonic, think plankton, right? Planktonic algae is floating around. It's not really sticking to anything. I mean, it might come against the tile line or something, but it can also go into your filter. But it's not trying to adhere and grow like a web or a colony on the wall. That would be filamentous.
[00:12:15] All you're doing is you're increasing the surface area and releasing or brushing off that slime so that chlorine can actually get to it. So if you release it off the surface, you have a higher probability of killing it off. And that's a really good thing. Regular chlorination is enough to prevent algae in most cases.
[00:12:33] Jarred Morgan: I kind of have a different approach when I have a massive amount of yellow algae or some algae in general, that's stuck to the surface of the floor. My personal favorite is to use a brush vac. Just brush vac it straight to the filter. Shock the crap out of it, and that way you're getting it off of the walls, straight to the system, having treated water flowing right through it. And then you can backwash or clean the filter after that point. That way you're not having this massive demand on your system.
[00:13:00] Terry Arko: And that goes back to being disruptive. And I wrote an article for IPSSA called disrupting the enemy, it was all about algae and it was all about anything you can do to disrupt algae and its growth is going to work fairly well.
[00:13:10] Eric Knight: Well, Terry, while we're on that, before I get to the next subject, I think that's a good segue. Do you mind summarizing what you wrote in that article? Disrupting? What do you mean by that? I haven't read that article. I thought I read everything you've published, and I guess not. What about this one?
[00:13:22] Terry Arko: Well, you know, I wrote this quite a long time ago, and I will tell you this is where our crossroads might meet. I did talk about algaecides in there too. But you know, my main point of the whole thing was that algae likes to be comfortable.
[00:13:35] Brushing was a big part of that article. And you know, just talking about you can't let it get comfortable. Once you let it get to where it starts really growing and it's more comfortable, it's a lot harder to deal with.
Why we advise against using algaecides
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[00:13:44] Jarred Morgan: You brought up algaecides in that article. Let's just make our position known. We understand that there is algaecide being sold and used in this industry. And quite honestly, it wouldn't be used or sold if it did not work. We're not saying algaecides don't work. If you maintain proactive pool care, you maintain sufficient chlorine levels, cyanuric acid, and all these other things that we preach, we don't feel that it's necessary. So let's just get that out of the way. And we understand they're there. We just don't promote them. That's why.
[00:14:15] Eric Knight: Hold on, Jarred. There's another reason we don't. And that's because of the long-term byproducts and the chemical conflicts after the fact.
[00:14:21] Jarred Morgan: Correct.
[00:14:22] Eric Knight: Every single algaecide that you can use, that's not named chlorine, will leave something behind that chlorine will conflict with down the road. Or something else we'll conflict with.
[00:14:30] We talked in a previous episode about sodium bromide. Sodium bromide leaves behind a permanent problem. Copper is going to get oxidized eventually. You could have stains, right? Polyquat, quaternary ammonia, you're going to have combined chlorine. Now all these things are left behind and we'll talk about that in some future episodes.
Why algae can have different colors
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[00:14:48] Eric Knight: I've got mapped out that Terry and I want to conquer. But in this episode, let me finish talking about what differentiates green and mustard because they actually have a very similar treatment plan. So the good news is, if you do it right, it doesn't matter if it's green or yellow, you're going to be able to conquer both.
[00:15:04] The reason they look different is because of the chlorophyll types that are in them. Green algae have chlorophyll types A and B. I'm going to be honest with you, I don't know what that means. But the sources said that, so I'm going to take them at their word. There was a marine biologist on there talking about it. And he said, the difference between a yellow algae and a green algae is that a yellow algae or mustard algae has more beta carotene in it. For some reason, this helps it process a lot less light to do the same thing so that it can survive.
[00:15:34] In some sense, it's a much more hardy or tough type of algae. It is more chlorine resistant over time because its cell walls are thicker, at a molecular level, I guess. But the biofilm that protects it... is very similar to the one that protects green algae. So there's not a lot of difference. They both feel slimy because they're both primarily made of cellulose, polysaccharides, and proteins.
[00:15:59] All of that is organic. All of it. The head of black algae, even though that's a bacteria is made of something similar, except it's a much rougher texture. It's harder, this is more of a slime.
How to treat a pool with algae
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[00:16:11] Eric Knight: The same thing goes in a treatment plan. Of making sure you optimize your sanitizer, but you got to get through the slime. That's really what it comes down to. Manage the slime, get regular chlorination to handle it. Now, of course, you could shock. You could super chlorinate.
[00:16:26] You could absolutely do that and burn through the slime, I guess. But remember, it's chlorine resistant. Chlorine wasn't made to get through polysaccharides. It was made to kill things. So if you can handle that organic film... It's going to be a lot easier to get chlorine to the target.
[00:16:42] Terry Arko: So the difference between like yellow or mustard, or sometimes people call it yellow brown. The green's like a flagella, you know, for they call it, or dynoflagelites. That's the classification that basically that's just if you were looking at green algae under a microscope, and you looked at it, you'd have these sort of oblong-shaped, and they have a whip at the end of the whip tail, and that tail is like what makes it swim all around.
[00:17:07] They like to just swim in the water, that's why they're floating, free floating, or whatever.
[00:17:11] Eric Knight: That's planktonic, that's planktonic.
[00:17:13] Terry Arko: Planktonic, and it's they call it like a flagellite or whatever, which is kind of interesting, but anyway.
[00:17:19] Eric Knight: After I have Chipotle, I'm very flagellant.
[00:17:22] Jarred Morgan: That's exactly where my brain was going with flagellant.
[00:17:25] Terry Arko: Yeah. And so am I.
[00:17:26] Jarred Morgan: Hey, me too, man. Me too.
[00:17:28] Eric Knight: We are mature people. This is a professional.
[00:17:29] Terry Arko: That flagellants.
[00:17:30] Eric Knight: Yes, that's flagellants.
[00:17:32] Terry Arko: And yellow algae they're classified as diatoms.
[00:17:35] Eric Knight: Yeah. Fun fact, there are other species of algae that are also diatoms that consume silica and calcium and all these other things. And then when they dry out and they die out, so to speak, they get crushed into a product that we use as filter media called diatomaceous earth. Now, it's not the same algae that you see in the pool, but it is a different type of algae. So just a little fun fact in there.
How to prevent algae
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[00:17:58] Eric Knight: Terry, what can we do to optimize chlorine performance to prevent algae? And then the second question is, if you have algae already, what can you do to optimize chlorine to get rid of it?
[00:18:10] Terry Arko: Well, on the prevention end you have to make sure that wherever you're keeping your free chlorine levels, you're producing enough hypochlorous acid to kill algae. And to keep algae out of the pool. And the research has shown that you need 0.5 ppm of hypochlorous acid in order to kill algae. Research has also shown that if you even have 30 parts per million cyanuric acid in your pool and, you know, The general guideline or recommendation is like, let's just say it's one to three, it's actually EPA, it's one to four.
[00:18:45] Eric Knight: One to four what?
[00:18:46] Terry Arko: I'm sorry. One to four parts per million free chlorine in order to keep bacteria and algae at bay and your pool. Right? That's what they say. However, all the research has also shown that you have to have that 0.5 ppm of HOCl in order to kill algae and that if your CYA is at 30, you're not going to produce sufficient HOCl until you're at four ppm.
[00:19:10] So based on where somebody's cyanuric acid is and so forth, they may look and go, Oh, well, you know, this, this manufacturer or this chlorine, you know, manufacturers recommending three as if I'm at three, everything's good. Well, they're at three, but they're not producing enough HOCl, they're going to have algae.
[00:19:27] So talking about the preventing side, I think we really need to look into where the cyanuric acid levels are. Look into the free chlorine to cyanuric acid ratio. Make sure you're practicing that. And I would just say, I mean, if you know you're in an area that's prone for algae, or you've got a pool that's prone for algae and you, you're trying to maintain and prevent that.
[00:19:50] If you've got CYA anywhere from 30 on up. You're going to need to really hone in on where your free chlorine level needs to be so that you're producing enough HOCl to keep that algae at bay and to kill that algae.
[00:20:02] Eric Knight: Well, isn't it 7. 5% of your cyanuric acid level is desired? So if we were at a hundred for easy math, a hundred CYA, which a lot of trichlor pools have, they even have more than that. 7.5 parts per million free chlorine is your minimum. So if we cut that in half, that goes to 3.25,
[00:20:20] Terry Arko: Right.
[00:20:21] Eric Knight: I understand what you're saying. It's a little bit less than four, but four would be a safe number to go for.
[00:20:25] Jarred Morgan: Let's just say that we tell people all the time to shoot for a 30 parts cyanuric, 30 to 50. If you're a 30, you need 2.25 parts of free chlorine. So more than that, and I know everyone, I'll say everybody, but the majority.
[00:20:42] Eric Knight: Hold on. You need that maintained, Jarred.
[00:20:44] Jarred Morgan: I agree.
[00:20:44] Terry Arko: You need that maintained.
[00:20:46] Jarred Morgan: That's what I was trying to get to. We know, experientially, circumstances that we've been through.
[00:20:51] Terry Arko: Experientially, we know.
[00:20:53] Eric Knight: Come on.
[00:20:54] Jarred Morgan: Well, when Terry's right, Terry's right.
[00:20:56] Eric Knight: I know I'm getting ganged up on here.
[00:20:58] Terry Arko: Doesn't happen very often, so better grab on to it.
[00:21:01] Eric Knight: Let's savor these moments.
[00:21:02] Jarred Morgan: But experientially, we know that every pool in this country is maintained in our perfect prediction of 30 to 50 parts cyanuric acid, right?
[00:21:10] Eric Knight: Oh, of course. Yeah, right. Yeah.
How much chlorine is needed with CYA?
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[00:21:11] Jarred Morgan: So we know that if we're telling people 30 parts cyanuric acid is good, our starting level is 2.25 free chlorine minimum. That's hard.
[00:21:24] Eric Knight: Well, it's also hard to keep it there. because it gets used up so quickly. So where do you think you need to shock on a seven day route, like a once a week route? How high do you think it needs to go, Jarred? Just
[00:21:35] Jarred Morgan: Round numbers. Usually when I was maintaining a pool, I would try to get the chlorine level, you know, around five parts per million. Just 'cause I know I probably had that 30 to 50 parts cyanuric.
[00:21:46] And knowing it was going to dip down, then you just kind of rinse and repeat week after week after week. And if you have any issues, hit it a little harder. If you do have algae, you're going to hit a little harder than the normal weekly maintenance routine. And just try to do the best you can.
[00:22:00] Trust me, this is a tough job. Maintaining pools, especially right now when it's 105 degrees outside, and as everybody should know, when the water temperature heats up, molecular activity heats up. These things speed up and it's a lot harder, a lot faster things that are going on that we have to manage as pool guys.
[00:22:18] Eric Knight: I have a question then. You say five parts per million. Did you ever have algae?
[00:22:24] Jarred Morgan: Oh, sure.
[00:22:25] Eric Knight: So it fell short.
[00:22:27] Jarred Morgan: Absolutely. Not on every, not on, this is a blanket standardizing my pool care situation here. You're going to have one offs. Hard pools, pools that have dogs that are swimming in them with trees that are overhanging the pool, then all these different scenarios.
[00:22:41] Eric Knight: Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Fair. What do we do for our trichlor customers? So many of our listeners have a lot of trichlor and that's really all they know, or that's all that's available. If the CYA keeps climbing up I guess I'll direct this towards Terry. If the CYA keeps climbing up, let's say you have 120 or more, which is pretty common in Southern California and the desert areas, what can be done?
[00:23:03] Terry Arko: That's a tough one, you know. Dilute some water out from time to time. It goes back to knowing the free chlorine to CYA ratio and having to raise it up more. The problem is, if you have to put more chlorine and use trichlor, then, you know, it's just going to keep going up and up and up and up.
[00:23:21] So, that's an issue, you know.
[00:23:23] Eric Knight: Jarred, for the last seven years, when we would get calls about algae, they still happen. What's the first question we at Orenda ask somebody who calls us about algae?
[00:23:33] Jarred Morgan: No, thank you.
[00:23:36] Eric Knight: Oh, come on. What chemistry do we want to know first?
[00:23:39] Jarred Morgan: Obviously we want to know cyanuric acid. We want to know chlorine. We want to know what have they been doing historically to that pool to maintain it.
[00:23:47] Eric Knight: People think because Orenda makes PR-10,000 that the first thing we care about is what are your phosphate levels? I can't remember the last time I asked that question. It's not about your phosphate levels. Research says you want to stay under 500 parts per billion. You don't need zero. But if you take four pillars, and you get to pillar three, stay under that. But that's really not directly related to this.
[00:24:09] This is an indirect relationship. The focus should be optimizing chlorine and keeping your CYA to a minimum and being proactive. Brushing. Taking care of business so that you don't have the opportunity for these films too produce. Remember they are organic. What can you do to get organics out of the water so that things like this don't occur?
[00:24:29] Jarred Morgan: People call and ask, and we ask them leading questions to get a total picture of what they're trying to manage, because we're not trying to give you advice which revolves around the use of our products just so we can make a buck. Because if you're dealing with a pool that uses trichlor, and the cyanaric acid is 120 parts per million and your TDS is 5,000. Why on earth would I tell you to put 100 worth of something into your pool when you're managing a soup of water that is going to be a continual pain in the butt?
[00:25:00] So we'll tell you. Dilute it. Drain it down. Start with something you can actually work with before you start investing more chemicals to get where you want to go and maintaining this pool. Don't waste your money.
[00:25:11] Eric Knight: Terry, you'll get a kick out of this. I was in Tucson not too long ago. I guess it was last year.
[00:25:17] And a guy came up to me after my class because I was talking about keeping CYA to a minimum. That's our fourth pillar. So the third pillar is about keeping phosphates below 500. The fourth pillar, if you guys listening have not taken the four pillars, is about minimal cyanuric acid, 50 or less. And he comes up to me afterwards and said, man, I've been doing this 20, 30 years, whatever it was.
[00:25:37] And I have almost all of my pools on trichlor, and they have CYA over 200, some over 300, and I haven't had any problems with it. I said, really? You've never had algae in Tucson in 20 to 30 years? That's crazy. He said, no, no, I didn't say I've never had algae. I said, yeah, you did. You just said you've never had problems related to cyanuric acid.
[00:25:57] And the connection was not drawn there. So if you're listening to this. Hear us very clearly. We're not anti trichlor. We're anti overstabilization. There's a big difference.
[00:26:08] You can use trichlor responsibly to supplement a non-stabilized chlorine or salt system, and it's very effective. Just to keep your CYA levels at a responsible level. Sure, you could go above 50 parts per million. Many pools do. I dare say millions of pools do. But it's a lot harder to stay ahead of algae.
[00:26:26] So what can you do proactively to prevent green or yellow algae? Number one, brush. Number two, supplement your chlorine so chlorine isn't alone in this fight. Number three, keep your CYA to a minimum. You can wait and be reactionary. And then there's all sorts of products out there on the market that will help you prevent. I mean, there are mineral systems, there are algaecides, there are all these things and they work.
[00:26:52] Like Jarred said, they wouldn't sell if they didn't work.
[00:26:54] Jarred Morgan: Well, let's just not say all of them work. We've seen a lot of things that can say they do a lot of things, but
[00:27:00] Eric Knight: Generally speaking, the popular systems are popular because they work. We're not saying they don't. Just be aware of the byproducts left behind. We don't want conflicts down the road because eventually you're going to have more chlorine demand getting rid of that algaecide than you did the algae to begin with.
Conclusion
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[00:27:17] Eric Knight: So let's wrap this episode up. Jarred, what are your thoughts? How much do I need to delete from this episode?
[00:27:23] Jarred Morgan: Nothing. We don't edit these at all. These are just complete straight riffs that we just rip off to our 158 listeners. Thank you all, by the way. Maybe we get to 160 with Terry's inclusion, but we're, we're doing big things.
[00:27:37] Eric Knight: Terry, have you subscribed yet?
[00:27:40] Terry Arko: I think I have. If I haven't, I should.
[00:27:43] Eric Knight: If not, we're up to 159.
[00:27:45] Terry Arko: Okay, well, I'll, I think I have.
[00:27:47] Eric Knight: That's great.
[00:27:48] Terry Arko: I'll double check.
[00:27:49] Eric Knight: Okay, cool. Tell your friends. All right, Terry, what are your thoughts?
[00:27:54] Terry Arko: I teach this everywhere I go when I'm teaching water chemistry. And that is how important free chlorine is. And the one thing I encourage pros to do and to know, not that they have to do this every week, but they should know pretty much the difference between what their free chlorine level is and what their combined levels are. I talk to a lot of pros and they're like, well, I test my total chlorine.
[00:28:18] What else do you test? Well, my pH. So they're testing total chlorine pH. I'm like, you absolutely don't know what's going on in that pool.
[00:28:23] You have no idea. You're only testing total chlorine. What's your free chlorine? What's your combined? And the thing is, the real secret here to keeping bacteria, algae, anything free from a pool is you have to have your free chlorine level higher than your combined levels.
[00:28:37] Jarred Morgan: I'm going to second that statement from Terry because when I was maintaining pools, I could not tell you if I ever checked my free chlorine levels, it was always total chlorine because you know what? I had to get onto the next job. I was going to spend 30 minutes here. I had to vacuum the pool, empty the baskets, brush it down, net it, add chemicals, do all these other things. And I just got a baseline of total chlorine, alkalinity, pH, and that was about it.
[00:29:03] Eric Knight: Well, I will tell you, we do have a few episodes in the hopper.
[00:29:07] Terry, you have seen the forecast for the next 12 episodes or so. Where we will get into byproducts like that. Combined chlorine, chloramines, nitrogen, all of that stuff is coming down the chute for all of our listeners. So we will get into more detail on that in the future. But for this, if we could summarize it again, be proactive against algae.
[00:29:27] Understand it is protected by an organic film. Brush that off. Do other things that reduce non-living organics. I'll leave you to figure out what that might be. And... keep your cyanuric acid to a minimum and your free chlorine to CYA ratio high enough so that you can stay ahead of it. And Terry's absolutely right. You need to make sure you have at least half a part per million of hypochlorous acid. Terry, anything else before we wrap up?
[00:29:55] Terry Arko: I think that's it. And make sure you brush.
[00:29:57] Eric Knight: All right, guys. Thank you so much for being on here. This has been episode 118 of the Rule Your Pool podcast. Thank you for all the feedback.
[00:30:03] If you have questions. Visit our website, orendatech.Com, our help center, ask.orendatech.Com. We've been getting a lot of feedback and questions. And of course, you could email me directly, podcast@orendatech.Com. And Terry, if people would like to reach you, you have an email address as well. Isn't it askterry@hasapool.com?
[00:30:23] Terry Arko: That is correct. askterry@hasapool.com.
[00:30:28] Eric Knight: Awesome. Everybody. Thank you for being here. I will now get to editing this episode. Until next time. Take care.
[00:30:34] Jarred Morgan: Thank y'all.