Vanish Pool & Spa Stain Remover 2 Pack (4LBS)- Natural Safe Citrus Based, Works Excellent on Vinyl, Fiberglass, and Metals, Removes Rust and Other Tough Stains

I don’t often write reviews on Amazon. But, I have to return the favor here. I uncovered my above ground pool this year and my cover had a tear in it which allowed the dirty, leaf filled water to sink into the pool over the winter. The result was that my pool had a 2 foot tall black ring around the bottom of the pool. After opening the pool. As usual with all the usual chemicals, plus super shocking with gallons of liquid shock…nothing. I couldn’t even take an ounce of the stain off with a brush. My pool liner is over 8 years old now so I thought I was going to have to order a new liner. I found this product on Amazon and read the reviews but honestly was concerned that the manufacturer of the product was paying folks to writer positive reviews. I did order 4lbs at least to give it a try. There was a review here that had detailed instructions for success that included stopping chlorine, raising the ph and pouring in the product and letting it sit as long as you can, like more than 24 hours. I followed his advice and poured two containers of this stuff along the pool edge. I did not turn the filter on and let the pool sit for a few days. I added the powder in late afternoon and by the next morning, NOTHINNG had happened. I continued to let it sit and by the next day, I swear that the ring was gone. As each day went by, the stain just disappeared. By day three, I turned my filter back on and started adding chlorine. I’m telling you this stuff works. I thought there was no way, but I am telling you it 1,000% worked for me. Besides removing the stain, it also made my water so clear. I’ve never seen my pool water so clean and clear. One additional item based on a previous review, I did add metal out when I turned the pump back on just to be sure any metals that were removed were grabbed by the filter. Try this stuff before you replace your liner! Good luck! Oh and I also reordered another batch of this, just in case.

ASTONISHED! I don’t have a “before” picture because I never thought I’d be writing a review since I rarely do. But when I tell you mine and my husband’s jaws have been on the floor since trying this product, I’m not exaggerating! Our results may be tied to the specifics of our pool, so for reference it’s a salt water pool with shotcrete pebble finish. We had what we thought was a growing rust stain extending between drains and then out about 10 feet. It had been there for over a year, and we were told by the pool company we would have to drain the pool and treat it with chemicals. I found this product and thought what’s the harm in trying it before we go to more extreme measures. I ordered the 2-pack and literally just turned the pool off so the water was still. I didn’t bother testing pH as directed. I sprinkled both containers over the stains, which were 6 feet under water. Between sprinkling the first container and opening the second, I could tell it was already working but thought I must be crazy! I spread the second container and left it to sit. 5 minutes later, my husband looked at it and yelled to me that it was working. I took a look and it was definitely already fading. We came back out an hour later, and the stains were completely gone! No brushing, no running the filter…nothing! We brushed it to make sure all traces were gone, but I really don’t think it did anything. As I mentioned, I’m not one to write reviews but this worked so shockingly well that I just had to. Even if it doesn’t work for your specific situation, it’s worth the cost and ease to at least try. This saved us SO much effort and time. I just wished we tried it sooner!

This worked really well it just does not work really fast, I have a 12,000 gallon in ground plaster diamond brite pool with a salt generator, I used both containers it took over 24 hours to see the results I was looking for. The trick with this stuff is you need patience your chlorine level needs to be at zero or 1PPM and your pH needs to be 7.2 to 7.4 in order for this to even work. The other thing is you need to get a metal sequesterant because what this does is it lifts the metal stains off the surface and suspends them into the water, chlorine causes oxidation which releases the metals back to the surfaces of your pool and will restain them. The citrus acid will zero out all of your chlorine you have to burn off the citrus acid before you can hold a steady chlorine level and ph the trick is is to add it slowly you cannot bomb the pool with chlorine and you must keep pH in ideal range to get chlorine to work properly it's a balancing act. This will not do anything for organic stains like algae. I used AI to help me with this based on the gallons of the pool and knowing how the citric acid worked and dosing with small amounts of chlorine. I'm very happy with the results as you can see with the pictures it did wonders.

My hopes were high, guys. I thought for sure I had found THE product to remove the staining from my pool. First off, I would just like to say that I hate my pool. If you’re here you likely already have one, but if by chance you don’t, DON’T DO IT. Secondly, I followed the instructions precisely. I was patient. I was hopeful. I gaslit myself into thinking I SURELY did something wrong (I didn’t). This doesn’t work, guys. MAYBE if your staining is truly metal related, perhaps it works. But if your staining is from old dead algae clinging to the bottom of your pool liner all winter, this ain’t it. My water is crystal clear- that discoloration you see in the photo is STAIN on the liner. Don’t listen to the other reviews. It’s a waste of time AND now my pool is seriously unbalanced, which was a risk I was willing to take when I thought it would get the stain out. Not sure what my next step is now, but now I’m out (another) $40 and still have an ugly pool. Surprise, add this to my growing list of “why I hate this $&!@?!! pool”.

Had brown metal iron stains on vinyl pool near steps in shallow end and bottom edges of deep end. Shallow end stains were gone in minutes! Deep end stains lightened. I saw a u tube video that mentioned filling a sock to get the crystals onto the deep end stains. I will try that next. That video also mentioned the importance of using a metal remover product so the stains don’t come back. Broadcasting the crystals wasn’t very effective for the deep end.

This works super well for getting stains from my tree off the vinyl, but it did turn my pool green. My pool guy said it’s because it puts all of it in the water and then you have to use a second chemical to get it cycled back out. In any case, the pool looks great now we gotta figured it out. I didn’t want to add that the little red spots that we have in our pool only disappeared where the chemical touched it directly. In the deepest part of the pool, which is 8 feet, if the granules didn’t directly touch, it did not remove the stain. I sort of have some stripes through the pool, but I’m gonna do it again to get the last of it.

I wasn't expecting much from this but I did what it said to do and after a couple of days my white fiberglass pool that had tons of orange brown stains was now completely white again. A tip is to turn your pump off and put this in and leave it off for 24 hours. Just go ahead and do it. If you turn your pump back on in an hour or 6 hours or 8 hours or whatever this stuff immediately starts getting sucked into your filtration and pulled out of the pool where it's not going to do its job. If you put a whole bottle of this in your pool half of it's going to be stuck in the filter not doing anything so it's best to just leave the pool off for an entire day and the results are much better much faster. Turning the pump back on too soon renders this product useless since it gets filtered out too quickly. But I didn't look into it enough to realize that after you do this you absolutely must use a sequestering agent such as metal free or whatever the name your local pool place calls it to now get this metal out of the pool once it's lifted. Some of these products tell you that on the label and some don't but you have to or there's no point in even bothering. If you don't do this the metal stays in the water and eventually sticks right back to the pool and stains again. You absolutely have to do this just like you absolutely every pool season must use clarifier and a phosphate remover weekly. It's that important to do this immediately once this stuff works after a couple of days before you start doing anything else including putting chlorine in. Get the metal out first with a metal free sequestering agent before doing anything else or you going to be pulling your hair out a week later when the pool looks worse than it did before. Also, it's not as simple as the directions say to wait a day or two then rebalance. By a day or two later whether you started this with your pH low and your chlorine low doesn't really matter. The absorbic acid in this along with your chlorine will eat each other so all your chlorine is going to come out anyway regardless. Your alkaline and pH will probably go lower as well. That's why it's best to use this when you havent put anything in your pool for a couple of weeks where it's just naturally low on all the chemicals you need so that way it just does what it's supposed to do without you having to do anything special to get your chemicals out of the pool that we're already there. Just let them come down naturally in a couple of weeks then use this stuff. Once you use this all the chlorine will come out of the pool within a couple of days and naturally this will make most people want to start dumping chlorine right back in the pool immediately because everyone is afraid of the water clouding up or algae blooming again. But it's not a good idea because the absorbic acid has to be used up first which it in fact does stay in the water quite a bit longer than the couple of days it takes to whiten your pool or it along with the chlorine you put back in will eat each other immediately causing your pool to hold no chlorine. Then you'll be putting chlorine in every single day only for it to disappear in less than 24 hours. You just absolutely must use this, then a metal free agent, then once a few days goes by slowly start putting chlorine back in. This is a process that most people are going to find to be an extreme headache but it's the only way you can do it properly without having your pool becoming so imbalanced that you spend weeks trying to get it back to what it looked like before you put this stuff in to begin with. This will end up throwing your alkaline and pH off along with by the time you do all this with this product and a sequestering agent to get the metal out will create extra phosphates that will cloud the water. It's seems to be a lengthy process but worth it if you do it right and just deal with having your pool imbalanced for a couple of weeks. Mainly because you have to slowly put chlorine back in because if you put it in too fast it oxidizes the metals that are still in the water and restains. Trust me, if you don't do this properly the stains will come right back in your pool & will look worse than it did before since now it will be a cloudy mess and you will be spending tons of money and time going to a pool store having your water checked several times trying to figure out why it's not holding chlorine and why your pH and alkaline keep going too high than too low all the while having a cloudy pool but gleaming white as long as you didn't throw in too much chlorine too fast. If you do that it reverts to the old look and you're going to have to do all this all over again spending another couple of weeks trying to get everything clear and balanced. My suggestion is unless you can't live without ugly your pool looks early on in the season to instead do this closer to the end of the season when the summer is coming to a close and the luster of the pool has worn off where you don't really care anymore. Everybody knows that feeling that by then you're over it and you're just ready to be done with it. I personally used this right after I opened it and it cleared up because it was too unsightly to let go through the whole pool season. But if I ever did it again I would definitely wait until around September because the amount of time you're going to have to put into getting everything back to normal and clearing the water up and keeping the pool holding chlorine and getting the absorbic acid and metal out of the water almost isn't worth it if you're trying to get your pool cleared up for the holidays during summer. It can be an extreme headache but worth it in the end. You just have to know this going in and none of these products tell you that this is what's going to happen. Just be ready to make several trips to the pool store to have your water samples checked and you're probably going to go through by the time you do this more chlorine getting everything back to normal along with muriatic acid and PH up and alkaline up and taking those back down. It's an extreme headache but again can be worth it if you're patient and know this going in. It's not as simple as putting this in and it turning white and you just dumping chlorine back in and everything's fine. It's too bad it's not that simple but it's just not the case. You have to be careful when doing this or you're going to have a very long summer pulling your hair out trying to get your pool balanced back after using this.

When opening my pool this year I found a horrible yellow staining on the liner. I added 4 lbs of this to my 24' pool and within 2 days the stain was totally GONE. I was definitely skeptical and had accepted that I was going to have to spend a day scrubbing the stain away with a sock full of crushed vitamin C tablets...but this was MUCH easier! Lol