I have been expecting the difficulty to go down in the during the next 18 hours in order for the adjustment to make it go up for the next phase.

I would suggest that all pools move over to BCH immediately to try to sway the difficulty adjustment for BTC to adjust down.   There will be a big pump on BCH coming and despite what the profitability is saying now you will be doing your customers a great service.

There is a lot more mining hardware on the market right now, that has suddenly appeared on markets like alibaba.  Think that there could be far more mining power out there than is anticipated.

Interesting video by 500bitcoins     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccqHh-Pv8Co