Keeping plants algae free?

So, i'm pretty new to the plant world and have been starting out with some easy to care for ones like dwarf sag. My problem is that I get quite a bit of algae growth on my plants, which takes away from how good they look. I don't have any algae eaters, its just a 10 gallon tank with four golden white clouds. So I was wondering how I should keep the algae off my plants? Should I get some algae eaters? (If so which would you recommend for a tank the size of mine) Or should I just take the plants out and scrub the algae off? Or is there some other thing that I'm missing?

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Comment by GSP on March 27, 2012 at 11:56am: balance your planted tank. Light, co2, nutrients, all need to be balanced to that plant's thrive and grow where algae will be inhibited.

Comment by Robert Jango on March 28, 2012 at 1:42am: Get floating plants. Water cabbage is best. They kick algae's ass.

Comment by Fabrigas O'brian on March 28, 2012 at 4:29am: Well you could be missing something and having too much something at the same time. There might not be enough plants to get rid/use the exess nutrients if you half the dose of liquid ferts if u have any or add lots of fast growing plants like Cabomba, jungke val, dwarfhairgras , reg hairgrass, amazon frogbit , you might see improvement if this all falls in vain get some duckweed from... Lfs ponds anywhere

Comment by Aqua Hound on March 29, 2012 at 11:15am: try some shrimp like amanos or cherry they will eat the algae all up.

Comment by Doug T. on April 1, 2012 at 12:17pm: First thing is what kind of algae is it? Depending on what it is will help determine how to remove it. For hair algae, shrimps seem to work best for me. Amano's are great cleaners, but a cheaper option is ghost shrimps(5 for $2 compared to 3.99/ea for amano). Oto cats seem to do a pretty good job at cleaning the actual leaves of plants as well any algae off the sides of the glass.