Does anyone have a fish emulsion recipe?

Lila Liv · Guest

I am curious about making my own fish emulsion. Has anyone ever seen a recipe for this? Thanks!

Gar · Guest Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Posts: 533 Location: Lavon,Texas

Lila Liv,
I did a Goggle search for fish emulsion receipes and found one on the Good Captains (CaptainCompost) Garden Web site.
http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2002080041031662.html Give it a looksee. If you have any questions on his receipe, you may want to PM him direct. He is an active member on this Forum in the Composting Section.

CaptainCompostAL · Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 12:05 pm Post subject:

Yes, I made my own all the time, since I have access to several boxes of salmon and grouper fish scraps weekly from a local seafood store.

Fish emulsions are not near as good as fish meals, or better yet fishy aerated compost tea recipes.

Fish emulsions are made from the leftover, almost worthless remains of the menhaden fish, after all the best meat parts have been used and sold off as cat foods and cosmetic products. There are no fish oils nor aerobic microbes in fish emulsion.

Fish meal is better, it contains more protein meat parts, and maybe some ground fish bone meal. Still yet no aerobic microbes in it either.

A homemade aerated compost tea with some rotting fish parts in it, is the best. It has the fish oil for better beneficial fungal foods for the tea, and fish oil is an excellent sticker spreader. The aerobic bacteria and fungi help control diseases and pests better for plants and soils, when used as a foliar/soil drench.

Always keep rotting fish mixed with lots of extra heavy browns like sawdust when composting. Also keep plenty of high carbon, sugary products like molasses in the tea brew also to maintain pleasant smelling conditions.

Yaya7 · Guest

Would pond water which has live fish in it be considered a type of fish emulsion? The fish poop in it, and a pump aerates the water and pumps it to filters, etc. If yes, would it be fair to say that watering my plants with pond water is in effect fertilizing them? Thanks
Yaya

CaptainCompostAL · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:29 am Post subject:

Yes, any aerated or non-aerated fish/aquarium water is a great fertilizer. (mostly nitrogen and phoshorus), but that is NOT the same as fish emulsion or fish meal.

Fish meal and fish emulsions are made from cooked, slightly composted, fish scraps (mostly the leftover parts of the menhaden fish). The menhaden fish is an oily fish, kin to the herring and sardine. The best parts of the fish is sold off as cat food products and cosmetic products. The leftover stuff is made into natural fertilizing products.

Because of the process, most commercial fish emulsions contain absolutely no fish oils and mainly no beneficial aerobic microbes in the bottles. Think about it! If fish emulsions had aerobic microbes growing in them, the bottles would explode on the shelves! (LOL)

Fish meals, on the other hand, may have a touch of fish oils in them, but they contain more cooked, ground up fish flesh and bones, based on the factory's recipe for the product.

Any whole fish scraps that you can put in your compost pile, garden beds, or in special aerobic compost tea recipes, will have far more nutrients and a wider variety of beneficial microbes in it, than most commercial fish meals or emulsions anyway.