If it's hair algae, leave it. If it's slime or goo, it will come off easily.
My method is this: swipe your palm across the screen while rinsing. This will remove slime and gooey/spongey stuff. Then use your fingertips and rub gently under running water; this will remove some of the more loosely attached algae (hopefully no more than 25%)
Here are my thoughts on screen start-up vs long term, and why you shouldn't worry about or try to force a specific type of growth.
Different algaes will tend to pop up depending on the nutrient/chemical balance. Sometimes, when you start up a scrubber, things are set up for growing multiple types of algae well. Then, over time, levels change and one algae ends up with better conditions, and that algae become dominant. Between that point and the starting point, the scrubber can be all over the map. I've had orange goo, yellow spongey growth, dense/dark GHA with a reddish slime coating that looks black under red light, etc. It was that way for months, and then it was like someone flipped a switch and I got explosive GHA growth and pretty much nothing else. This was on my personal tank where I was testing versions and the nutrients had risen, so it was sort of like a semi-mature tank that had not had a scrubber on it (effectively). I have seen similar patterns on other similar tanks. But that's it - just a pattern.
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Algae Scrubber Basics!!! GOOGLE "algaescrubber zoho"
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