REVIVE! Swimming Pool Phosphate and Algae Remover Chemical for Pools - 32 oz

I've been handling our in-ground pool for many years; open and close it myself and perform all maintenance. THIS was the first time it ever got out of control during the summer.The algae bloom started 3 weeks ago today, after the pool being perfect since I opened it the last week of May. My mistake was: not immediately shocking and vacuuming to waste when there were only traces. Should have known better but, stirred it up with an Aquabot and brushed the walls. Within a couple of days, the water clouded and started turning green. And then we went on vacation for a week. On the return, it was awful. After shocking and running the filter for a few days, a week ago it still looked like the first 3 photos. Not any better, during the hottest days of the year.At that point, I'd gotten the first of what would eventually be 2 bottles of Revive; took the first set of photos; promised myself to write a great review, if it worked. (Somewhat hopeful after watching demo videos on YouTube). Shocked the pool again and sprayed it; waited the weekend; didn't make much difference (even though I could see some things were going on; some floating debris; etc).At that point I called the manufacturer's tech support line, and spent a while talking with a very helpful, knowledgable woman. Her recommendation was to supershock it before hitting it with another bottle Revive (which doesn't directly kill algae, which was why the discussion with her was so helpful. It takes phosphates out of the water, which are food for the algae, in addition to other organic materials and contaminants. Calcium hypo shock to kill the algae in combination with then taking away its food supply is what's needed).Over the next few days: I shocked the pool, once per night in the early evening, and ran the filter (which is a Hayward S200 sand filter) almost continuously. No vacuuming or robot-ing to stir up the bottom. No wall brushing. Sand filters clear the water slowly. Backwashed the filter twice a day - each time, there was definitely cloudy material being removed, and the water gradually started to improve, but SLOWLY. After 5 days of steady progress, I still couldn't see the bottom of the pool, at most the bottom step, but the toxic radioactive green had settled down to a hazy milky grayish green. Remember: water is still very cloudy, can't see the bottom, can only see the improvement in that the top few inches water layer was "better" and the top sides of the pool near the waterline were showing traces of blue. (and remember, still no additional Revive, or any other chemicals, during this time).At this point, I felt the pool would continue to clear SLOWLY by maintaining this per-day and that after maybe another week or more, it would be mostly back. Good, but not great, and very gradual.So 24 hours ago, with the chlorine high, I sprayed it with bottle #2 of Revive.The 2nd three photos are from this morning, 24 hours later. Amazing. The water isn't clear yet but it's hugely better. Most of what was in the water has settled to the bottom. You can see it best in the photo of the shallow end of the pool, the last one (and a pattern on the bottom where a stray frog disturbed it). There's a nice layer of sludge on the steps and a thick layer of white sandy gunk on the floor (just as tech support predicted). Some clumps of algae have floated to the surface. (more on that shortly). You can see the color of the liner and without adding the Revive, it would have taken days to get to this point.I vacuumed carefully to waste, to stir up as little as possible. Refilling the pool now for another vac session; one more should do it. More material continues to either settle to the bottom, or float to the surface and coagulate into patches. Those patches, as I've found, can be skimmed with a small bucket and dumped into a larger one; they're fine algae coagulated particulate. While I'm waiting for the water level to rise I'm skimming off buckets of this and throwing it out (repeated 5 gallon buckets of cloudy grayish slightly yellow greenish material). Skimming by hand seems to be the best way to eliminate as much as possible; don't want to run this through the filter and have some of it come back into the pool without being caught by the sand. This is tedious but I'm sure it's going to save much time overall in finishing the cleanup.I could have waited another day for the initial vacuuming, to let more material settle, but decided to get rid of the bottom layer sooner, as I could see that the surface patches were coming from chunks of it breaking off and rising up. I'm putting this down to how badly contaminated the pool was.In short: I can highly recommend this product, and as other successful reviewers have noted, PATIENCE is in order. Also, for a pool as highly contaminated as mine was to start, I can see that one bottle wasn't enough. Impossible to know if using 2 bottles at the start would have worked; or whether it would have been better to shock more heavily, wait a few days, and then hit with one or two bottles at that point.Update #1: After 2 vacuum-to waste sessions, running the filter constantly, and a few backwashes, it's back to normal (still slightly cloudy but another day or two of filtering will make it crystal clear). Total time after applying the 2nd bottle of Revive 3 days.Update #2: (2 years later, May 2021). I haven't had to use Revive since my initial review. I've been more careful about keeping chlorine levels somewhat higher, and staying ahead of algae. Watch for it to inevitably show up somewhere; brush it away and shock; anything more than "small" amounts of algae, do a quick vacuum to waste to get RID of it immediately. I have one bottle of Revive on hand just in case. I still highly recommend this product as it was the only solution that worked, 2 years ago. This extensive review and photos shows it all in detail.Comment #1: For reviews that says that the product "is water" or "does nothing", that's not true. I wasn't going to write this detailed review unless it actually *worked*. It did exactly what the instructions (and tech support) said it would do. (and as I was spraying and distributing it on the pool, I could already see some coagulation of materials on the surface). For it to work: you HAVE to shock the pool and kill all or at least most of the algae, in combination with hitting it with Revive afterward. As tech support told me, Revive won't kill the algae (although it does take away its food supply - phosphates in the water). You need shock to kill the algae, and you have to use the right kind of shock: calcium hypochlorite shock

My neighbor was away on vacation when I noticed she had a serious algae bloom happening after we had lots of rain. Being an experienced pool owner myself and living by my low-maintenance pool plan of using Revive to rid water of containments when I open and then Pool Rx afterwards for maintenance, I knew just how to fix this.First pic was on Wednesday… 2 1/2 days later (Saturday), just in time for her arrival home, I had her pool sparkling clear and perfect again, and from experience I know that it’ll now be low to completely maintenance free for her the rest of this year!!!! She’s so excited!!!Steps:*SECOND PIC* Used “Revive” to floc metals, phosphates, and algae to bottom. Waited 24 hours for everything to settle to bottom (if you do this in Spring, you need to wait much long if water is cold — sometimes it’s a few days). For her pool I had to vacuum the bottom to waste 3x waiting for floc to settle back down after each vacuum because there was just so much gunk.*THIRD PIC* I cleaned half the pool at a time. 1/2 the pool is vacuumed to waste and the other 1/2 still green. When you use Revive you have to keep topping off your water. I recommend Venusfilter for pools on the end of a water hose to prevent more metals from well water to enter pool during topping off water process. VERY IMPORTANT! You’re getting the metals out too with Revive, so don’t add more!!!*After vacuuming the pool to waste and determining I got 99% of it, I backwashed and shocked it Fri night 3x the normal amount to kill any leftover algae and I added algaecide at the start-Ievel.*FINAL PIC* Backwashed the next morning (Saturday) before balancing. Pool looks amazing and swim ready!!*Tested water samples and balanced it, only needed a little alkalinity increaser and some chlorine tabs to get free chlorine levels up.*Added Pool Rx in skimmer as final step! Very important to maintain this beautiful water! Pool Rx is amazing!! Her chemical demand will lessen and it’ll be essentially maintenance free for her now, water will sparkle, and there will be no fear of algae growth. But you can not backwash for 2 weeks!!! Which is fine bc you won’t need it, pool will sparkle!! I speak from years of experience and I now know countless people who are using the Revive and Pool Rx combo and they all swear by it!!Hope this helps someone else….. this is also my start-up pool opening steps (especially if you have an algae problem)!! You’ll have clear water, need to shock minimum amount and it’ll be very low maintenance!! I tell everyone at start-up, use Revive and Pool Rx…. It’s the perfect combination and you will use 1/2 the chlorine and chemicals you normally use!!!Happy swimming! 💦

Stuff is amazing. We couldn't see the bottom of our pool, I don't think we could see the first step on the ladder. (1st photo) We add a half bottle or so and waited 24 hours. It was nasty but we could see the bottom as so much crap & algae had sunk (2nd picture). Our pool was almost clear at this point but we had swirled a lot up from vacuuming so we re-schocked the pool, let the filter run for an hour and used the rest of the Reveive again. Another 24 hours and a vacuum later and it looked perfect (3rd photo). For reference we have a 10,000 gallon pool, 18ft x 54 inches.You absolutely must vacuum the water (and nasty) out of the pool, bypassing the filter. Don't let that water re-enter the pool. Refill the pool when your done. Then get your pool chemicals square again.My only complaint is that there was still a lot of globs of algae floating on top. That's why we did it twice. Maybe once would have been fine but I didn't want to risk it.Yes, this stuff is pricier than other brands but it works wonderfully!