I agree with most the suggestions and would add to it;
Additional information about your aquarium would be helpful in trouble shooting. What size tank, about how long has it been up and running, Give the details of your filtration system and what you do to maintain it.(is it a sump - protein skimmer - canister - etc..) What are your aquarium waters parameters? What is living in the tank?
What type of water are you using to mix your salt with? Are you using an r/o unit? If so have you tested the quality of the water it is producing? If your buying the water, can you test it do determine it's quality? As mentioned in an earlier post, testing the TDS (total dissolved solids) of the water the r/o unit produces will tell you a lot about it's quality. If your using tap water, that could cause the problem as well. Typically doing water changes is the answer to how to correct these types of problems but sometimes the water we are using is the cause. I have spent a lot of time trying to fix a problem only to learn that the water I was using was the cause of the problem I was trying to fix - 'doh!!!
What type of lighting do you have and how old are the light bulbs? Older lamps can cause undesirable algae growth, especially older florescent lamps. At about 6 months they typically have lost most of their usefulness, by 12 months they can really cause some algae issues. Just because they still turn on does not mean they are still good.
I suggest caution on the suggestion that you need to get some type of clean up crew. This practice may (or may not) aesthetically solve the problem but does not correct what is causing it. If that was all there is to it, you could just wipe the algae off the glass ans stir up the sand and get a similar result for free. I'm not at all suggesting that snails & hermits are not a good idea, I keep them in just about all my tanks. My point is that "clean up crew" should not be your main means of solving the problem with out first addressing and correcting (if needed) some of the other possible causes. Nuciance algae is often a sign of an undesirable condition that is potentially more damaging than just causing algae.
Another concern I have is, I too don't know the age of your aquarium. If it is a case of it's a newly set up aquarium going thru an algae faze, it may also have some other water quality issues as well. Adding snails or other cleaners to an aquarium that is not fully cycled and stable is not advisable. It may kill them and add even more waste to the system. I don't think that is the case with your tank but I think it needed to be brought up for others who have newly set up aquariums and may have got the impression that buying snails are appropriate for a new aquarium.
Give us some more info and I bet we can help get to the bottom of it.
Joel
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