Hi Janie, unfortunately the type of early rising behavior your starter displayed was most likely caused by a type of bacteria that gives off carbon dioxide, and seems to be linked to a subsequent delay in the wild yeast activating. If your starter has now stopped rising and is just bubbling a bit, this is probably what's going on. This is a fairly common occurrence, but can be frustrating to deal with since sometimes the delay in rising can go on for several days or even weeks. Since you're still so early on in the process, you might want to consider starting over with a slightly different routine that is meant to avoid this type of bacteria from the get go. This starter method was developed by microbiologist and sourdough baker, Debra Wink, and you can read about it here. Wink's method calls for using a wholegrain flour and pineapple juice to begin the starter, but once your starter is rising predictably and you shift into twice a day feedings you could also gradually transition back to feeding with unbleached all-purpose flour so that your starter routine ends up lining up with our sourdough starter recipe. 

I don't generally recommend using the starter discard so early in the process. During the early days the starter is busy weeding out unhelpful bacteria that can sometimes smell pretty awful, so I would wait at least until your starter has a pleasant aroma, and preferably until it is rising predictably. 

While patience does normally pay off with sourdough starters, in your case I would recommend trying the Wink method, which should save you a lot of flour, and hopefully get your starter off and running a bit sooner. 

Barb

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