Is this diatoms?

[G.A.]

Hello fish folks, newbie here with a 4 week old tank. I have this yucky brown stuff growing on my java fern and amazon sword. Is this diatoms or some sort of hair algae? I read diatoms you can suck up with gravel vac but that didn't work very well. I also tried rubbing it off one leaf and some of it came off but I was afraid to rub harder and maybe damage my fern.

What is this and how do I fight it? I'm on the tail end of a fish in cycle but should be able to add some more clean up crew in the next couple weeks. Depending on what this is any recs? 20 gallon long, I have 9 neon tetras, 3 Cory and 1 nerite snail right now. Heater is preset at 78.

I've got 1 Aqueon Day White and 1 Aqueon Colormax LED in my hood on for 10 hrs per day. Should I cut down on hours?

 

[Cory]

Being a new tank, you likely have multiple types of algae, and the amazon sword may be converting to submerged growth. At the moment, read on algaes etc. Don't be afraid of them though and some of them will be temporary while your tank is finding balance. After that you can use some algae eaters to tip the scales in your favor.

Here is a video I did years back on algae.

 

[Demobanana]

Hm...if I'm going to be honest here, I've never seen diatom algae that looks like that. Who knows though, maybe there's different types of diatom algae.     ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Whatever it is, good luck with it!

[jadavis98]

Hmmm, they kinda look like diatoms to me, but not sure.  Diatoms are not technically "algae" .

[G.A.]

Now I’m thinking maybe hair algae cause it has these little hairs sticking up. I tried to get a picture of those above but it wasn’t that great. I may just have to let it grow more so I’ll know what it is and which algae eaters would be best I guess.