Bromine pool problems

Hi - I need help! I’m a first year pool owner but have so far managed my pool OK this Summer. My pool is an 8m x 4m salt pool, with a newly installed chlorine generator. All was fine until last week when I found mustard algae (I recognised it from pictures and descriptions online). It was a yellow, dusty deposit on the pool floor.

Other chemistry seems OK - PH at 7.2, TAC at 120, CYA at 58, salt at 3.

I shocked the pool twice using chlorine tabs + turned the generator onto to S (shock). I also scrubbed walls and hoovered. The algae resisted even though the chlorine level was 10+ for a couple of days solid. I looked for help online and under advice I added sodium bromide NaBr. It appears the algae has gone - great - but I am now surprised to find out that I have a bromine pool. It’s totally unstable, it shows almost zero chlorine and not much more bromine after only a few hours of sunshine (this with the pump running and chlorine generator set to 8 out of 10). I really don’t want to have to leave the generator on max all the time.

I know it’s difficult to turn the pool back to a chlorine one without draining. I have a liner pool and believe it can cause damage if you totally drain it - is that correct. I’m pretty desperate. I was relaxed enought to be testing the pool every 2-3 days until this happened because it was stable. Now the sanitation varies by the hour. Is draining, somehow, my only solution?

Help!!!

Laurie

Hello Laurie - Thank you for contacting Inyo. Using sodium bromide does not permanently turn the pool to bromine. Sodium bromide is used all the time in chlorine pools to treat mustard algae. After using sodium bromide the pool needs to be shocked again with chlorine. We recommend using liquid (sodium hypochlorite) or granular chlorine shock (calcium hypochlorite) to bring the chlorine level back up.