Hi Sue - I'm not a regular follower or poster much anymore (not much spare
time) but I had the same problem last year. My pond was 2 years old when
this happened. Plants, fish were in place they even had babies last year
for the 1st time. Water quality was not an issue. But the only way I got
it up was with a shop vac with the small brushless tool used to clean floors
almost resembling an ice scraper. I even tried a rubber kitchen spatula and
it does come off in sheets if you do it gently but it was too time consuming
so resorted to the vac. As far as your river rock goes, it's scrubbing time
if it is that bad on the eyes. I know it's a type of algae or bacteria as
it gives off bubbles just like algae. It bothered me more than anything and
was the devil to take care of. I never got it all out but then from
overfeeding the fish fry developed a sweater type algae that soon covered
everything and that was more of an eyesore than the rust colored "slime"
covering on the rubber liner. It kept growing in length until I'm thinking
this is string algae. Good luck with your problem.

Peggy

"Sue Walsh" wrote in message
m...
ESPMER (K30a) wrote in message
...
This looks like a promising web page to
check out
http://www.state.me.us/dep/rwm/whats...onbacteria.htm

good luck!
k30a

Checked out the site, but I don't think this is my problem as what
they are talking about is an orange slimmy substance on the water.
This is not on the water surface but rather like an algea growth on
the liner it's self. Also they talk about it leaching up from the
soil under streams, can't happen with the liner in. It does not
appear to be slimmy. It really looks like the short aglea that grows
on most liners but it's rusty brown not green. If I can get a sample
of it, is there any place to get it tested to see what it is exactly?
Would the county extension office test it? I looked at the FAQ's and
didn't see too much except for fish tanks with some reference to rust
colored algea on glass tanks, and they just cleaned it off(but it
always came back), I can't exactly do that too easily. Any one else
here ever have this problem in their pond? How did I get so lucky?
Any other ideas?

Sue