Cladophora or GHA?

[pehcao]

Hello guys,

I've been an aquarist for about 8 months now, I have a small 10 gallon tank with lots of plants (mainly valisneria because all others die) and several different fish and shrimp. The fish and the shrimp are all doing great, I just put in plants because they look very nice and they help having healthier fish (as far as I've read) but my main focus has always been having healthy animals. Ever since I started the tank i've battled with algae, i've read up a lot on the different common types of algae and how to balance the nutrients but the algae don't ever go away, and in many cases they infest the plants and kill them (I assume?). Finally, I went to my local fish shop and showed them a few images (attached) and they said that I've been struggling a lot because it's Cladophora algae, that there's no way to get rid of it without restarting my tank and buying EVERYTHING new (kind of suspicious). I wanted to write here because I'd like more opinions on the matter and any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

My tank's usual parameters are as follows (before my weekly water change, and I also manually pull out algae as much as I can):

PH - 8.1 - 8.3

Nitrate - 10 - 20 ppm (these days I need to supplement nitrogen as the tank naturally consumes it)

gh - 8-10

kh - 4-5

Ammonia - 0 - 0.1

Nitrite - 0

Phosphate - 0 - 0.5 (also supplemented since I also read and heard that phosphate deficiencies can produce algae, but the aquarium naturally goes to 0) .

It's also worth noting that I put in several seachem tabs for some amazon swords and other plants, but only the amazon swords live as of now, but they're also starting to get infested and the other plants died. The algae has also sort of replaced my moss, and is also consuming my small anubia. Strangely enough the valisnerias are doing great, they reproduce like crazy and I need to keep pulling out runners to prevent them going to places I don't want them to go.

I hope this is enough information complementing the attached images, any comments would be greatly appreciated.

[Fish Folk]

Might be too much light / too long photoperiod. What temperature are you keeping it at?

[pehcao]

I keep it at 80°, 7 hour photoperiod on a finnex stingray 2.