Algae Blossoms Can Be Beautiful

Every year as winter starts to move into spring, the algae comes back. This year is no exception. As you can see in the first picture, the algae is coating the waterfall steps. This appears to be a thick coating of string algae. It looks really nasty and everything that falls on it sticks so the leaves get mixed in with the algae.
The second picture is much more interesting and beautiful in its own way. In fact this picture is now starring as wallpaper on one of my computers. This is the algae collection on top of the filter. I think this mass of algae must be fermenting which could account for all the bubbles on the surface. The bubbles don't seem to pop but do grow bigger. After the photo, I cleaned out the algae so we'll see how long it takes to come back.