Smelly AACT

So, I’ve been making compost tea for several years with good results but this time I tried something different. I added fish emulsion to the mix which obviously is very smelly from the start. After 24hrs of brewing I checked it and it smells rank! My tea usually smells sweet. It’s actively aerated with two air pumps and is in my basement ~70degF. Is this bad smell normal using fish? I’m gonna let it brew another 12hrs or so regardless. Just wanna know if I should dump it and start over without the fish or just run it

I think there’s little need to brew the fish emulsion. It’s possible that it had some small population of nasties in it that found a place to thrive in your bucket. Brew the AACT and then add the fish juice and mix right before you apply it to the plants. If your tea still smells like rot etc I wouldn’t use it

I came home from work today and my basement smelled like something died down there lol needless to say I tossed it outside where I was promptly stung by a yellow jacket ‍

I try to keep things of animal origin out of my teas because of that and other bad events. We have bears in the hood.

_mahavishnu said:

I think there’s little need to brew the fish emulsion. It’s possible that it had some small population of nasties in it that found a place to thrive in your bucket. Brew the AACT and then add the fish juice and mix right before you apply it to the plants. If your tea still smells like rot etc I wouldn’t use it

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It would seem logical to do this BUT IT IS NOT RECOMMMENDED!
Check out www.microbeorganics.com this is an excellent well documented account of compost tea brewing from a commercial brewer and microbiologist.
They experimented on the effects of adding fish preparations right before application. In their studies they found that adding fish hydrolyzate, the microbial populations in the brew plummeted within minutes. They recommend applying them seperately.

jmicrobe said:

It would seem logical to do this BUT IT IS NOT RECOMMMENDED!
Check out www.microbeorganics.com this is an excellent well documented account of compost tea brewing from a commercial brewer and microbiologist.
They experimented on the effects of adding fish preparations right before application. In their studies they found that adding fish hydrolyzate, the microbial populations in the brew plummeted within minutes. They recommend applying them seperately.

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would this suggest that feeding fish hydrolysate could be harmful to the soil food web in general, regardless of timing?

_mahavishnu said:

would this suggest that feeding fish hydrolysate could be harmful to the soil food web in general, regardless of timing?

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No I wouldnt consider this as evidence for that. The fish hydrolyzate is a concentrated fertilizer that is there to feed the nitrogen cycle. Nitrifying bacteria take days to process the ammonia which should be in small quantities. Any organic chemical which is beneficial in small amounts will always still become a pollutant at a certain concentration. Adding this concentrate to a highly populated soil innoculum seems like it could easily upset the microbes, but I am the furthest from being an expert.