gone a week/green algae break out

Hey all.  Things were going really well with my tank FINALLY) I was about to start adding more coral/fish and then I had to go away for a week over Christmas.   I had my best friend "fish sit" for me.   She said she came every day and feed them once a day.  I showed her how to use a small pinch 
I came home to quite the green algae outbreak though:-(  Could that be due to overfeeding??? She did mention they looked hungry, oh oh, so who knows maybe she did feed more than I normally do.   
She said every other day she emptied out the sponge and skimmer cup.  Added RO/DI water too for top offs.   THis is new to me, I've had the diatoms, cyno, but this is my first green algae break out. lucky me Hey now I can say I"ve been through them all right. haha!
Just curious if people think this could have been due to overfeeding as I don't know what caused it since I wasn't here.  Also are my best chances of getting rid of it pulling it out manually and doing the water change or are there better ideas out there?  I can't wait to get this one under control cause I'm excited to start adding to it  I've been saying that for awhile now, but things really were doing great until break , darn vacations!!!!

 

didn't mention before, just said green algae..... it's green hair algae. 

 

I've had the tank for 10 months now.  Wow, nearing the 1 year mark  My parameters I checked this morning were....
salinity 1.024 which I'm slowly bumping up to 1.025,1.026. 
nitrates and phosphates were both zero. 
I didn't check anything else as those seem to be the main things people check for when it comes to algae. 
It could be the small tweaks... I do usually use my extra pump every other day or so to spray detritus off the rocks and I was afraid to have her try that  and maybe the overfeeding.    The only other thing I did differently was my last water change right before break  I changed my water source from the Walmart culligan tank to a LFS  RO/DI water (that stands for local fish store right?, that's what I gathered from the forums) Trying to use the jargon and I'm sure I sometimes screw it up so bare with me 
Clean up crew... Unfortunately much of my clean up crew died off in an earlier low salinity scare.  I think I have maybe 4-5 red scarlett and blue legged hermit crabs left and maybe 4-5 astrea snails, and one peppermint shrimp.   I have a 29 gallon tank.  I've been thinking of adding more, would that be a good idea? 
Thanks for helping out

 

Thanks for the advice on the CUC. I will plan on adding to my crew, probably this weekend. SOunds like I"m on the low side.

I manually pulled a bunch out, syphoned some out, turkey basted, used a toothbrush, (not mine, haha I have one especially for my tank). Spent quite awhile on it before doing my water change. Now after my water change.... wow it's amazing how much better it looks already. Besides, it gave me a chance to change my aquascaping again, just a tad. Seems I do that everytime I do a deep clean.

I guess my tank does need me It makes me feel good that it falls apart when I'm gone. Shows I must be doing something right.

Thanks for the advice and I also found some good info on melevsreef.com titled Green Hair Algae: Why Me??? that gave me some good info in case anyone else is reading this and needs help on hair algae.

 

well I got a mexican turbo snail. It is huge and it is really taking care of the algae pretty well!!!! I didn't have a lot left because the water change, manual pulling had helped. It is a lot of fun to watch too!!!

I picked up a royal gramma also. I'd been ready to get another fish for awhile and had been doing some research on what I could put in my tank. I"ve been really happy with it! It's a beautiful fish and spends a lot of time out swimming around in the tunnels. It is starting to venture around the tank more, the first day it didn't go far from its cave. That is after it spent the first 12 hours hiding to the point I truly thought it was dead. I love the purple and yellow and it has been really fun to watch interact with my clowns. I did get some frozen mysis shrimp and its eating it right up. It didn't seem to like my flake food. Kept spitting it out.

It's nice to start enjoying my tank again and with the new additions I just want to watch it all the time