I like to use a two sided sponge when I clean my 75 gallon. For the trickier places I prefer the use of a razor blade as mentioned above. Although my two chinese algae eaters are doing a great job with most the plants I find they have trouble eating the the small algae formation on the bottom of the tank. This is when I bought an algea killer solution.
Although this helps a lot, my plants are growing slower than usual due to the lack of water hardness. So I compensate by using peat moss around the base of each plant. Most of them love this, especially the amazon swords and the cryptocorynes.