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Hey I have recently started up a new freshwater tank (40 gallons) and have been having a bit of algae problems. Which fish would you recommend to fight this problem?

Ok, so the BEST solution for this is to figure out what's causing the algae problem in the first place. Adding more fish is probably only going to make the problem worse if it's caused by excess of nutrition. Bigger or more frequent water changing is the solution here.

If it's caused by the wrong type (or too much) light, then the solution is to reduce the time the light is on, perhaps with a "light siesta", i.e. turning the lights off for a period in the middle of the day.

It is also common for NEW tanks to have a growth of brown algae after a few weeks. This will go away again when the tank is more established - scraping the algae off before you change water (so that you can suck up most of it with your siphon).

The best algae eater in my opinion is . But it also depends on the setup in your tank, if it's heavily planted and no large fishes, you may be better off with some .

Note that if it's a slow buildup of algae, then the algae eater will need supplemental feeding when the algae runs out - for examples of foods, please have a look at the article in the footer of this post (where it says "Articles(1)").

Finally, there's few fishes that eat ALL types of algae, so if you have the "wrong type", you may not get any fish to eat it. Most of the catfish types of algae eaters will only eat brown and short green algae. The long green stuff, hair-algae (dark green "strings") or green/red spot algae will not be eaten by these fish. Long green and hair algae can be eaten by certain barbs, such as Rosy barbs.

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Mats

It is like Mat says.
As long as the overallstocking levels, ligh period and generally good rouine maintenance is being performed all aquariums go through an ecological succssion.

Eventually, the aquarium ecosystem becomes more complex and algae problems become rare. This is especially true of planted aquaria. The higher plants utilize the available nutrients and light more effectively than algaes and they are squeezed out by the competition.

Better to keep the fish you enjoy rather than to use them to correct temporary or poor tank conditions.