Home Made Fish Hydro

Has anyone made their own fish hydrolysate? I am experimenting with this currently but I wasn't able to find anything in the way of a step by step guide or anything very informative. In theory you take a whole fish or whatever remains, chop them up and blenderize them along with the appropriate enzymes which happen to be present in kiwi and papaya fruit. After some time things should break down and the bones should mostly dissolve, at which point the whole thing is strained.

I used a whole salmon head (1.7 lbs) and one peeled kiwi fruit. Had to add in about a cup of water to help liquify things. Couldn't find anything to suggest exactly how much kiwi was necessary for this, or how much time it needs to sit for... or anything else for that matter.

Let me know if there is anything more to this process or whatever other input you might have.

Looking forward to seeing how it turns out. How long before you strain it.

Could you make a vid of when you pop the top of whatever it's in? LOL It will, for sure, be a youtube moment.

Man! That stuff is gonna be ripe. Did you add any EM-1 or the like to help break it down?

Wet

After roughly 24 hours I actually went over to check it out and breath it in... surprisingly didn't smell too bad. Doesn't mean it still can't go horribly wrong though. The only real change I can see as of yet is that minute bubbles have developed throughout. Never heard of the EM-1, is that like commercially available papaya peptidase? The kiwi has either that or a similar enzyme present which is supposed to hydrolyse the fish proteins and make the bones soluble, so I just thru in a whole kiwi and mixed it in with the blender.

It should be evident whether or not it is working after a couple more days as the remaining solids should become less. All I really know is if this works out I will have made about a liter of fish fertilizer for just about $2.75 USD. Then the next logical step would be to catch my own fish.

agree with catching fish

EM-1=Effective Microorganisms

http://www.teraganix.com/

Good stuff. I do Bokashi with it along with compost type stuff and adding to the soil. The nice thing is, EM-1 is a concentrate and can be expanded to ~1qt of AEM (Activated Effective Microorganisms), for every oz of concentrate.

More info if you want it.

Wet

Hmm I don't know about fish and microbes, from my understanding the enzyme in the fruit was responsible for the hydrolysis but that would be interesting to try as well.

Not so sure it is working out as it should, but something is happening in the mix. For one the volume rose substantially and it looks like it is due to air bubbles throughout. It does smell worse than it did, but still not as bad as I would have imagined. Solids are still evident and it is quite thick. So, I don't know if more fruit would have been called for, or water, or if temperature matters or if I should run the blender on it again or what. I'll have to do some more research and bury the mess deeeeep down in the garden if it doesn't seem to liquify in the next couple days.

More fruit and less water would be my guess. I'm not sure if there is enough enzymes from one kiwi to go through all that fish matter.

So you got me interested enough to for read myself. I found nothing about enzymes-papaya or pineapple. I am familiar with these in human digestion but nothing indicates to me that it will break down fish.
This is a great explanation of http://www.gardenscure.com/420/organics-reference/30593-how-make-fish-emulsion.html although it doesn't give practical explanations at all.
First I've not gathered that fish emulsions are composted. it appears that they are ground, an acid is added (vinegar, etc) to lower pH. After a few days to a few weeks. It appears this is to allow the water to absorbed much of the fish. Its then filtered. Ready to use. I would not think you could this store very long without cooling or adding odor retardants as commercial bottling does. Also yours will have lots of fat since its salmon and that will cause a slower stinkier decay.
Most appear to compost the fish. Which it appears your are trying to do. 1 fish head, papaya and water is not going to be aerobically composted. Its anaerobic. Wet was telling you a good way to do anaerobic composting. A sealed bucket and fermenting medium.
This appears to be what most home gardeners are doing. Anaerobic for 2-3 months then adding it to the compost pile. Bokashi is a method of anaerobic composting that is simple to use.
I have my first bokashi bucket going now for about 10 weeks. I just checked it. It appears to be almost completely broke down. It is black with some white fungus growing on top. Going to feed some to my worms this week and see how it goes. Oh and I but bones and fat in the mix. Shit I would never add to a traditional compost due to fat and proteins, things your trying to break down in the fish.
My first attempt at bokashi is by simply adding yogurt whey to the bucket and closing the lid. Since bokashi uses lactobacillus, which is what yogurt whey is, I poured a half gallon of whey over the waste and it appears to be working. I read about it some where can claim the idea. I couldn't be happier with the results.
I myself have access to large amounts of freshwater fish scrapes and plan to start a fish bokashi bucket since its working well. Next pet waste http://www.bokashicycle.com/petcycle.html?
Good luck

Yah i'll have to see if I can find anything more informative or something. I did find some stuff on the web about fish emulsion, but the hydrolysate was supposed to be a somewhat easier\different method. What I really wanted to see was something that told me exactly what kind of fish to use, how much fish to fruit (or anything else needed), how long it is supposed to sit for, what temperature it is supposed to be at (it's on the cold floor at the moment), etc. but I didn't think I was going to get that lucky with it.

Thanks for the input everyone.

What I've heard, from someone else's sad experience, is to let the bokashi 'sludge' dry out before giving it to the worms. This guy said he dumped the sludge right from the bucket and wiped out his bin.

Makes sense, that stuff is super acidic.

What I do, since my wife and I don't generate enough scraps to really do a bucket, is make the bokashi bran using both wheat bran or alfalfa, or a combination and feed that to the worms. They seem to ignore it for a day or 2 and then go to town on it.

Wet