Chris, I am reminded of a ...

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Chris,

I am reminded of a saying by my microbiology professor at Berkeley 40 years ago, "You can find every organism in Bergey's Manual at the front door of your local wastewater treatment plant. All you need to do to get organisms to grow in treatment is to provide the right conditions." This doesn't necessarily hold if we are talking about a purely industrial waste, but it is a good rule to remember.  If you have a pH of 4.5 in your system, re-seeding will not help you. You need to look into why you have such a low pH. Acids in the influent? In which case, alkaline pH adjustment could be needed.

Best wishes,

Randal

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Thanks Randall. I have inherited this system a few months ago. No testing equipment, not pH probe, no chemicals, nothing. Recently I had a grease trap overflow into the system which has added to the problem. For the past few weeks I have been manually dosing lime mainly for alkalinity and also NaOH. Today I saw a pH of 7.09 in my main aeration tank and 6.97 in the decant aeration take where my stages happen. Today I installed a dosing pump to dose NaOH into the main aeration tank to no longer manually dose and to also have a good regular dose maintained. I am waiting on test gear to test for nutrients and alkalinity . It really has been a dogs breakfast , I hope I am making inroads . My first goal was to reach a good pH of about 7.2. The only problem now is that I work on a roster which is 3weeks on 3weeks off, the other workers have no understanding so I am worried I will be back to square 1 when I come back. Hopefully the lime addition will go some way in preserving my pH . I appreciate your advice. Thank you 

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