There is just one slight problem I can see with the initial compounds code: it assumes the species is in the vents (Thrive/src/microbe_stage/MicrobeSpecies.cs at 754f93ebb94a868a3d4ab3857babadea2b6e86ff · Revolutionary-Games/Thrive · GitHub) But there’s nothing I can see that could explain what you are describing.
Please show a screenshot of your species in the editor so that I can replicate it.
The situation has not changed from: