Other lake constituents can influence lake metabolic rates including CO concentration, pH, salinity, and silica, among others. CO can be a limiting (or co-limiting along with other nutrients) resource for primary productivity and can promote more intense phytoplankton blooms. Some algal species, such as chrysophytes, may not have carbon-concentrating mechanisms or the ability to use bicarbonate as a source of inorganic carbon for photosynthesis, thus, elevated levels of CO may increase their rates of photosynthesis. During algal blooms, elevated dissolved CO ensures that CO is not a limiting resource for growth since rapid increases in production deplete CO and raise pH. Changes in pH at short time scales (e.g. sub-daily) from spikes in primary productivity may cause short-term reductions in bacterial growth and respiration, but at longer timescales, bacterial communities can adapt to elevated pH.
Salinity can also cause changes in metabolic rates of lakes through salinity impacts on individual metabolic rates and community composition. Lake metabolic rates can be correlated both positively or negatively with salinity due to interactions of salinity with other drivers of ecosystem metabolism, such as flushing rates or droughts. For example, Moreira-Turcq (2000) found that excess precipitation over evaporation caused reduced salinity in a coastal lagoon, increased nutrient loading, and increased pelagic primary productivity. The positive relationship between primary productivity and salinity might be an indicator of changes in nutrient availability due to increased inflows. However, salinity increases from road salts can cause toxicity in some lake organisms, and extreme cases of salinity increases can restrict lake mixing which could change distribution of metabolism rates throughout the lake water column.