Good Questions: Fish Smell Mystery?

Hello AT,

My apartment has a constant smell of fish in the kitchen but despite cleaning it with every product known to mankind the smell won't go away. I live with 2 other girls and my 10 pound dog, and we each cook our own dinner but the smell is just heinous. My dog even left the apartment for a week to see if it was his stuff and the smell was still there. What could it be?

Thanks, Julie

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Dear Julie,

This is SO Cartalk.

A smell in the kitchen that you can't identify? When we lived in Little Italy, we often had smells drifting up from the apartment below through the cracks in the floor especially around the pipes that came up in the corners. First theory: check your downstairs neighbors.

Second theory: one of your roommates is pulling your leg by leaving fish out whenever you are away and then hiding it in her closet when you come home.

Third theory: Fish smell could be coming from something fishy somewhere in your kitchen.

Is it coming from the fridge or the room? We would first clean the cabinets out and wash the walls down. Check inside and behind the fridge. Is there a bottle of fish sauce spilled back there? Questions to ask:
Has the fish smell been a constant or did it just start?
Do you always smell it or only at certain times of the day?

If it's been a constant it's probably IN the kitchen, and may even be in invisible grease by the stove or on the walls. If it's irregular it's probably coming from outside of your apartment.

Anyone else?

Comments (9)

I had the same smell in my closet, it was disgusting. It was the lightbulbs! My lightbulbs had a glass cover over them and when i removed it...out came the smell. I looked it up on the web and found the answer from another lady that had the same problem, she said it was her lightbulbs also. So try switching your lightbulbs and cleaning the cover if you have one.

Hi Julie & y'all
omg ! I totally had the same thing in my house,it was a lightbulb,how wierd is that ? Like a fish/catfood smell driving me nutz. I thot it was a mouse or something & asked the local council fellas to come out & check it [ just act all helpless & gurly it SO works ;-) ].
They reckon wif the new rat/mouse poisons that u dont get a smell 'cos the 'lil buggers dry out (kinda mummify).
Anyways sumone at work mentioned lightbulbs,i left one on at a time in the smelly area & bingo ! So changed it (new green stylee of course !) & fingers x'd seems to have dun it .YAY ! so gud luk xx

Thanks originally to Julie for starting this! We have been plagued with a HORRIBLE fish smell that wakes us up at night starting 14 months ago when I moved into the condo. Because of the longevity, we knew it wasn't an animal decomposing.
Thinking it had gone over spring/summer, it started up again when we turned on the downstairs heating unit in November. It's got to be in the socket/wiring of the downstairs heating unit; unfortunately the HVAC system pumps the fish smell throughout the home.
Therefore, my entertaining has been at a standstill in cold weather. Electrician has been called. THANK YOU!

recently the smell of death has taken over my house in chapel hill, NC. the smell originated as an unpleasant odor in the livingroom and the hallway on one side of the house to an omnipresent and downright putrid smell, inside and outside, in a matter of days.

coincidentally, the smell came about at the same time a pipe behind the wall started to leak. based on the insightful comments in this thread, I thought the leaking water may have been activating the smell of dead mice and their droppings behind the wall. at first it was reasonable to think that this was the case, that the smell was emanating from the wall, or that it came from the rotten milk carton in the recycle bin in the kitchen, or the water left over in the washing machine in the hallway.

however, yesterday I hired a plumber to fix the leak and there were no dead mice and no scent in the wall. the milk carton was cleaned out and the washing machine was dried out. the plumber suggested a mouse died somewhere in the HVAC system.

last night I took a whiff of the air vent in my room and became momentarily convinced myself that a rodent died in the HVAC system. that would explain why the smell was everywhere in the house, but it didn't explain why the same smell was potent on the front porch. after much deliberation, I decided to call a local animal removal company. I let them know that there's a dead animal on my property and that I don't know where or what it is. they sent someone over in 20 minutes.

the source of the smell soon became clear: an opossum died in the crawl space beneath the livingroom. the bad news followed: the crawl space beneath the livingroom is too low to access and remove the opossum. a deodorizer bag was put up in the crawl space, along with humane traps to catch other opossums, but the deodorizer bag does nothing to eliminate the smell. I have to live with it for several weeks. oh well! I'm glad that the smell was identified and that it's possible that its peak strength has passed.

We live in a tri-level and had a stink problem a couple years ago. Smelled like dead rodent. It was coming from inside the basement wall on one side of the room. I finally narrowed it down to about a 3ft by 4 ft area and opened it up.I found a dead chipmunk. Now we have the problem again...5 years later..I knew I should have investigated a little further to find out where they were getting in...I heard some of the rodents moving around up in the ceiling. I have a theory. I think that one of the little rascals killed the other and dumped the body down the wall.

I live on the top floor of an apartment building and just a few days ago I walked into my bedroom and caught a whiff of something nasty. My bf and I had just finished scrubbing the house from top to bottom so it was really strange that there was a disgusting smell in the house. It was a mixture of stale air and fish food. I've narrowed it down to the steam coming out of the radiators. When the heat is on, the stench is present.

What does this mean? What are my options? I haven't asked anyone else in the building if they are smelling the same thing or not. Does the Super need to drain something or clean something? I'm clueless and just want to breathe freely again!

You say you are smelling a fishy odor when you snuggle up in bed? hmmmm. That's not good. Well this may sound strange but when you drool on your pillow alot it can leave a funny smell which can smell a bit fishy I guess. I had a boyfriend who left this smell behind on pillows. At first I was sniffing everywhere trying to find the smell and thought maybe he needed to go wash himself but found the drooly pillow to be the culprit. lol. Weird.

It's the bulbs. . .we were getting this fishy smell in several areas of the house and it was driving us crazy. We sniffed and sniffed and sniffed until our noses led us to the lightbulbs in several areas of the house. Crazy!!!!

my parents had the same problem (i'm having it in my newly renovated house now). the fishy smell turned out to be coming from the light fixture that attatches to the roof. Apparently the material used in these comes from Korea and was manufactured by using fish bones somewhere along the line! whether thats true or not the problem was eliminated by changing the fitting.