Brown Algae is New Menace

Last weekend we cleaned the filter as it was very dirty. I was suprised to see I needed to clean it again this week because it looked just as bad. It appears we have a brown algae bloom. From researching this, there are several possible causes; too much plant cover or too many nutrients in the water from the fish waste. Of the solutions, I did two, I removed some of the plants so more sunlight can get to the pond and I added two barley straw pads which are susposed to help with this problem. You may remember I tried barley straw with the string algae without much success. This link is from February when I was fighting the string algae I think the solution to the string algae was getting enough plant coverage so there wasn't enough sun to encourage the growth of the algae.
On another note, the Elephant Ears have now grown as tall as the light around the pond which is about 7 feet tall. They are huge and create a beautiful backdrop around the pond.