Sand Filter Help Needed

Hello to anyone willing to help a complete Noob to pools. We bought a home with an inground pool (~25k gallons). I’ve never had a pool before and know absolutely boo about pools, ownership, maintenance, operation, chemicals, etc. I’ve been reading lots and watching YouTube like it’s going out of style.

I have a problem with my sand filter. I replaced the sand and through research (right or wrong) replaced the sand with Filter Balls Blu 10. Wanted to simplify the cleaning…  here’s where my perceived problems start.

Also to note, I just opened my pool for spring and it looked like primordial soup in there. Definitely not like the crystal clear water that was in there when we closed it.

I followed the SLAM method and got it blue and on its way to being balanced on chemicals. It’s still cloudy. I’ve been vacuuming (through the filter as I’m too cheap to vacuum to waste). I know. Sounds funny to me even as I type that I’m too cheap to vacuum to waste and replace with city water but will pay for filter balls over sand…  I digress.

I didn’t feel like the filter was pulling out the dead algae quick enough. Decided to backwash my filter tonight to see if it was plugged. Even though the pressure drop hadn’t really increased.

Now the real question. When I backwashed tonight there seemed to be some flakes in the sightglass but not a bunch of milky color. I ran this for about 90 seconds. No more flakes, I switched to rinse. The second I turned the pump back on the sightglass turned milk color and eventually cleared up after 2-3 minutes. If I remember back to last summer’s idiot operation of a pool with no training, this is backwards of what’s supposed to happen on a backwash/rinse cycle.

I feel something is wrong and I may have put something on the filter together wrong or something. I also feel that this is why the pool isn’t clearing of dead algae after 7 days of 24x7 pump running.

Sorry for the diatribe, but it’s not an easy story to communicate. Any help is supremely appreciated!!!

thank you

I’ve got exactly the same issue. Anyone have an answer?