When should reversing show its signs?

Correction from first post.... 80mL per small plant, not 50 is a better estimate.. and this is being fairly wasteful and erring on the side of fully wetting entire surface area of plant. one other tip for conserving it / more effective application to plant .. get an opaque black spray bottle-- the type that uses air-pressure to create a finer mist. you pump it and once pressure builds up a mist comes out. If only doing one plant at a time, a 100mL one is plenty big enough. The finer mist improves absorption into plant tissue. light is your enemy with this stuff. when not using it, wrap it in aluminum foil or otherwise keep it pitch dark. You can tell it is getting 'old' if you start to see a precipitate - black or grey bits would indicate the silver is falling out of solution. I've used it several months out, so the 30-day shelf life of the STS solution is probably playing it safe. Some loss of conentration is tenable. Give it a little swirl occasionally if storing longer. and keep it dark of course. Better to be safe than sorry, though. Just mix up a new batch if it's going to be 2-3 months later or longer. You can also keep the sodium thiosulfate and silver nitrate solutions seperate for much longer periods of storage... then mix those solutions as needed and dilute as before.

So, i have instructions i made for myself in case i forget... a year between using it is tough remembering exact details, lol. Fwiw, i definitely think the overdosed STS causes inviable pollen. Small sample experience, but the results were drastically different. So, i no longer worry about "100%" conversion. 50% conversion is plenty to get thousands of seeds from a tiny plant. You'll see greater than 50% conversion with 2-3mM. I accidentally used hard tap water which definitely reduced resulting concentration the last breeding cycle. if you get high conversion rate but not a shit-ton of seeds, try a lower conecntration next time. The only times i had issues was accidentally applying 20mM or experiementing with 5-10mM concentrations. It should not be a problem in the 2-3mM range. ... 3 applications, 5 days apart.. that is all. Tried to fix formatting of the grams / mL stuff... hopefully it is aligned now. --------------- Notes from my bible.... i have not updated with my last results, the above should cover anything new. ------------------ NO METAL! Highly corrosive solutions involved and can leave permanent stains. Use some sort of protection for any surface you work on. Folded over garbage bag and some paper towel worked fine. Probably not wise to pour any excess down the drain, either. So, outside disposal only. NO METAL! Use Distilled water. Thoroughly dissolve silver nitrate. May take 30-60s stirring. Slowly pour 20mL silver nitrate solution into 80mL sodium thiosulfate solution, while stirring. This results in a 20mM solution that requires further dilution. 1-Liter (1:9 dilution) ................................................ g ....................... mL Sodium Thiosulfate 1.264 80 Silver Nitrate...................... 0.340 20 500mL Sodium Thiosulfate 0.632 40 Silver Nitrate...................... 0.170 10 250mL - Plenty for 1 plant, still wasting 2/3rds of product. Sodium Thiosulfate 0.316 20 Silver Nitrate...................... 0.085 ................... 5 Probably need 80mL per small plant and being liberal with 3 applications. Erring on high side to be safe. Difficult to mix up less than 500mL. Need smaller containers that can more easily hold and mix reagents at 5-20mL volumes. 225mL of water needed after that. A +/-.003g scale is good down to .03-.05grams. The individual reagent solutions can be stored in a dark container in the fridge for up to 6 months. The final STS solution has a shelf-life of 30 days. However, it was 3 months old when I used it for 2nd breeding run of 2023-2024 cycle, and it caused 100% conversion but with inviable pollen. I think this was more about higher concnetration used rather than being old. If I do have to store some longer-term, keep in fridge wrapped in aluminum foil to keep it pitch black. Plastic wrap with rubber band around rim of cup to avoid evaporation or a properly sealed container. 2-3mM is the suggested concentration. 1:9 or 1:5.67, respectively. Shoot for 2mM to see if lower concentration is more consistently resulting in viable pollen. Can try 3mM and 2 applications at some point, too. Breeding Procedure Three 2-3mM STS application FD0, FD5 and FD10 Start pollen-donator 7-8 days sooner than the pollen-receivers Should have pollen by FD18 and heavy pollen FD21-24 at latest Once majority of pollen sacs have opened, pepper for a week. Leave circulation fans off for a bit after peppering. I only gave them ~4.5 weeks to ripen in first trial, and those turned out well. Pollen mostly distributed by FD21-24. Tiny plants provide ~1000 seed. Go a full 5 weeks from removal of hermaphrodite. There's no reason to be impatient. 30 days works but .. 5 days more is nothing. https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/technical-documents/protocol/cell-culture-and-cell-culture-analysis/plant-tissue-culture/silver-thiosulfate

Should see 'some' percentage of conversion when the buds start forming. colloidal silver is wonky. If you bought one of those bottles stating "500 ppm" off amazone, it's probably bullshit and nowhere near that concentration. A lot of those products are not labeled accurately. Most of the failure rate for CS comes down to the product not beign what it says, but even properl levels of CS can sometimes fail. STS is more reliable and takes less effort. From what i've seen, you are better off making your own with a 9v battery and a silver coin. There are plenty of diy instructions for such a thing out there if you go that route. CS makes your plant look sickly AF, too. Extra dark and just not quite right all over. You don't have much of that going on so i think it was some inaccurately labeled 50ppm CS. CS needs to be sprayed daily for 10-14 days. That's all it should take. Definitely look into STS. Silver thiosulfate is super easy to mix together. If you can follow basic instructions, don't let a double-replacement reaction intimidate you :P Below is a URL for a properly balanced STS recipe. Not some uneducated guesses in a forum. *** This recipe needs further dilution. This results in a 20mM concentration. You don't need to know what a millimole is. You just need to dilute "20" to "2 or 3" millimoles. this is simple math. So, 1:5.667 ratio will give you 3mM and 1:9 will give you 2mM. https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/technical-documents/protocol/cell-culture-and-cell-culture-analysis/plant-tissue-culture/silver-thiosulfate In my experience, do not overdose STS. More is not necessarily better. I have had 100% conversion give inviable pollen and resulted in zero seeds (happened once, i avoid it like the plague now). Not just a handful but zero, lol. I have had a 50% conversion give me 1000+ seeds from a tiny plant (1oz yield plant give or take is the size i shoot for). So, don't get 'smart' and try a 5mM concentration as it won't necessarily help even if more of the plant converts. Also, don't try to do the reaction at the ending concentration. You mix exactly like the recipe says to ensure an efficient reaction takes place. It'snot hard. Just follow word-for word. You can proportional scale the recipe, but you still have to dilute as i stated above no matter what. Using silver nitrate requires some care. It can permenantly stain stuff, so don't do this on a fancy dinner table .. at least not without some sort of protective mats etc. It is highly corrosive, so only use plastic utensils and containers. If you buy 5-10g of silver nitrate (last i looked about 2 usd per gram on ebay), you will have the ability to make gallons of STS. Do not buy the pre-mixed STS - it has a short shelf life. Some products sell them as 2 stock solutions, and even that has a 6 month shelf life. Dry chemicals can be stored for years and you get it for pennies on the dollar by comparison. The pre-mixed stuff is so overpriced it's insane. It's price-gouging. Less then 20 usd should be able to make enough STS for several breeding sessions throughout year and for several years after that, lol. If you do small plants like me (again can give 1000-1500 seeds from just a 1oz plant) you only need 50mL or so per plant. 10g of silver nitrate can make 9 liters? or was it 9 gallons? either way, this is a shit ton. *going off memory, but both are huge amounts compared to the shit you can buy premixed, lol, and no risk of buying old, useless STS that all the silver precipitated out of. Sodium thiosulfate you can buy off ebay too.. 8 dollars for 113grams.. this is enough for 20grams of silver nitrate. I split a 20g silver nitrate + 113g bottle of sodium thiosulfate a few years ago womeone. Was 27-28 USD. I do 1-2 breeding cycles every year. I don't even think i've used a full gram of silver nitrate, yet, lol. You probably want to splurge on a microgram scale. The typical scale that is .01g resolution with +/- .03g error is only good if you are going to make 500mL finished batches or greater volume, otherwise your measurements start to take on 10% error or more the lighter you go. With a .001g resolution with +/-.003g error scale is good for smaller batches. Now you can use weights as low as .03g and still stay under 10% error, though i would stay above this... diluting this mass in a tiny drip of distilled water is not usually feasible, lol. These milligram scales come with little trays and utensils -- Remember to get the ones with plastic trays / utensils when given the option. They are maybe 15-20 dollars and it'll be useful for other things, too - like for nose candy, bwahah. I make '250 mL' 2-3mM batches and i still thow out 2/3rds of it while being wasteful with application.. This requires 20mL and 5mL of distilled water to dilute the dry chemicals. You can see that going lower starts to get really difficult without the right equipment. Even with this waste, you are spending 1/10th of what you will on the pre-mixed stuff. 250mL Sodium thiosulfate part .316g - 20mL Silver nitrate part .085g - 5mL mix as instructed above, then dilute by adding 9 parts or 225mL (9*25mL) .. this gives a 2mM 250mL solution. Err on high side of mass measuremnts and this will gaurantee a 2-3mM concentration. Apply day 1 of flip and 2 more times 5 days apart -- so first day of flip, 5th day after flip and 10th day. that is all. None of this daily spraying shit and the plant won't look like death, either. Should barely show any negative symptoms. Regardless of STS or CS, the plant you apply it to cannot be smoked or used for extractions. You can harvest seeds if you are 'selfing' but everything else is toxic trash you don't want to smoke or eat. The seeds are fine to use of course. The plants you pollinate are not toxic. Make sure the plant you apply sts or CS to is isolated from the rest of the plants. Let it drip dry before putting it near anything else. You don't want any cross-contamination. Put the "male" plant into flower about 7 days before the pollen-receivers. This should work well for nearly everything. Even if they go in at the same time, it will be fine. Unless you need 10s of thousands of seeds, saving time is way more valueable. SMaller plants require less effort, take up less space etc... You don't need much to get 1000-1500 seeds which even that is overkill for most home growers. People are always suprised when i give them a little baggy of 50 seeds, lol. If they grow my seeds, they can pop a ton and cull the weak without worry. The cost of seeds is disgusting. it's price-gouging.

i believe with colloidal silver it is recommended to do it for the plants whole life cycle so that it has time to build up. with silver thiosulfate (sts) you can wait until a couple weeks before flowering

I can't speak for a CS only routine but a STS only routine varies from plant to plant, can be as simple as spray once then flip and done...sometimes you can do weeks of spraying and flip hoping she will be a he, even still spraying on schedule, but to no avail. I have also found that the reversed plant usually lags severely if you did it right and hit that sweet spot (not too many male sites, just enough viable pollen for the project). Most of the things you'll be using on the plant to induce a reversal are able to be dispersed in the air as well. You can keep spraying. At this point your windows will most likely not line up. It happens, quite often, when trying to line up a reversal project... These days I prefer to reverse then save pollen and use it accordingly so I never miss a good pollination window.