How long does it take to recover after being hit with the substance.

 We only have the use of one small blower at a time.

We have a citrus packing plant upstream that uses a cleaner to remove wax from the equipment after x amount of oranges has been packaged.

We've tried to catch them  but it's a hit and miss situation. We only go to the small plant once or twice a week. Avg daily flow .35 MGD.

We're trying to buy a microscope to view the bugs but haven't scraped up enough money as yet.

Save your money and do not buy a microscope for your problem.  The best way to determine if an influent is toxic to your plant's bugs is to perform a specific oxygen uptake rate test (SOUR).  This is basically a one hour BOD utilizing your plants bugs to see if they can degrade the "food" present in the suspect sample.  You can literally spike a known amount of the suspect sample into a bottle and measure DO in an hour's time.  If DO goes down then the stuff in the sample is being broken down.  If no DO is utilized then you can determine that the bugs are either dead (and are not using the DO) or there is some type of inhibition.  I am being simplistic here but hopefully you get the jist of the matter.

E. coli happens!

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