fully dried rice grains to keep humidity at bay.
- is your rice not dry / hard / brittle ?
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It’s as dry as rice in a bag normally is? I guess that’s my point, that as soon as you crack the bag, it is subject to absorbing water from the air. How do I dry it though? Just bake it at a low temp, or whack it in the microwave?
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Lost my vault to the freezer. Sigh
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Tell me what you mean @Smooth. Can you expound on your methods of storing? Been popping beans from the freezer for a couple of years. Never had a problem.
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I had in individual cellophane baggies and then put into a plastic container. Freezer rarely opened. May try other techniques I put them in water and after they sunk I tried putting in soil and also in paper towel. No go. I have plenty more to try. Lost some nice C99 and Sweet Tooth along with some others. Would like to restock but not sure of consistency of the variety as first offered. My C99 from Mosca were nice. Love the Pineapple.
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Did your freezer thaw and refreeze? That’ll do it
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Hey @DougDawson can you throw up a link to those vials and case you use with the gaskets please bro? I wanna grab a few
Never mind found it above 
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OK, which one is above. I have an Amazon link and an Ali express link where they are about half the price.
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So @DougDawson you just put this cryo tube case by itself in the fridge, or do you place it inside another box, with like silica packs & then put in fridge? Thanks
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I just go straight into the fridge. The vials have seals so I don’t find the need for silica packs.
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Ok so instead of 81 for $29 on Amazon, now you can get 100 cryotubes (same design it seems) for $16.
I tried the Aliexpress ($11, good deal) but card denied, no doubt because of trying to make a purchase in China. Instead of going through the hassle of calling card company, I just went Amazon. Thanks buddy!
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I took @DougDawson’s recommendation and bought some of those for my seed storage. The only additional thing I did was wrap the box with gorilla tape to help keep out light. Probably not necessary since they’re in a fridge that rarely gets opened though, but it was a good idea at the time.
I found that a small percent (< 0.5%) of the vials have bad o-rings, so those vials went unused since I didn’t want to put effort into tracking down replacement o-rings for a couple vials.
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Thanks! Would it be super obvious that an o-ring is bad? Like easy to tell between a good seal & a bad one. I have limited o-ring experience.
Also, if you’re using an outside fridge, like garage etc. Do you need to be more mindful of humidity, or are all fridges self regulating, regardless of placement?
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I would think all newer frost free fringes should be fine.
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Yeah you’ll find that the cap never really seats properly when you screw it on. The caps with bad o-rings also typically keep turning like a stripped out screw and don’t fully tighten.
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Really like hearing everyone’s different methods!
I decided on a fridge because I was kind of nervous for the “temp wobble” of taking them out of the freezer to move, or if a power outage happens and felt the fridge would lessen the impact of that.
—I take a certain % of seeds and leave those in room temp (as a crude low-tech backup), and the other 85-95% in the fridge as a rough estimate; so if I get 20-40 seeds, I’ll leave about 4-7 in the room temp storage and the rest to the fridge.
—Each way (cold and non-cold storage) they are stored in these glass vials w/ stoppers, I use a label maker to put the strain on the vial and then I saran wrap the glass vials to hopefully keep any potential moisture out:
----Then I place those Saran wrapped glass vials in this case:
—Then I vacuum seal (using a bike pump) those cases inside one of these with some additional indicating silica packets:
—I then put one of those (the cold storage one) in the fridge with additional silica in the fridge, and then the other case (the room temp one) inside a Coleman cooler put away as a backup.
I use one of these for the fridge:
& added a hygrometer to measure temperature and humidity via bluetooth. I also put the entire fridge stash (Vacuum sealed case with the glass vials inside) in this farraday bag JUST on the off chance the bluetooth somehow messed with the seeds (I admit, went too paranoid here) 
:
One thing I did notice when I added some seeds & the hygrometer to the fridge initially is that the fridge kept showing the temperature drop as low at 31 F and raise as high as 37, and had humidity as high as 50 F when the door first opened but now humidity is going back down to the mid thirty range and hopefully even lower for the long term once it settles.
I’m hoping that’s just the initial change from opening the fridge and that it will settle closer to the 37-40 F Temp range and 20 F Humidity or lower in the longer term/consistently, as I had never measured the fridge temp until now.
I felt 20 F or lower humidity was fine even though some call for 10 because of all the silica I’ve added (never touching the seeds, those are by themselves in the glass jars but the case, vacuum sealed bag, and fridge itself have silica packets in them)
I’m aiming for 37-40 degrees consistently if possible as I didn’t want them to freeze & thaw long term, so I’ve moved the fridge dial down a bit to try and fine tune it closer to that 37-40 range so it stays there long term & so I’ll know where to keep it (no accurate temp control on the fridge just a 1-7 dial which is why I added the hygrometer).
I noticed the coleman cooler (room temp storage case) stays at a consistent 67-69 F temp and 28 F humidity which while IMO is too hot, stays pretty consistent but I’m waiting to see what happens in summer where I’ll crack up the AC more to supplement & is just being used as a dry backup just in case something fails with the fridge method.
My specific goal for these seeds/tek would be to last at LEAST 5-10 years with good germination rates, which I know seems like a 50-50 gamble at best.
Any helpful advise greatly appreciated; thought I’d show what i’m doing in hopes it helps anyone discuss or generate an idea!
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I like the thought that went into this. The faraday cage is probably a bit overkill, but hey, it’s not going to mess with anything.
I’ve been considering something similar because I know that I want to be popping some of the beans I’m getting now in 20 years.
I was thinking tubes like yours, vacuum packed with desiccant, an indicator strip and a vacuum packed bag of water. I know that part won’t make much sense but I’m talking about something like a freezer pack. Of water, or maybe something else. That would provide some local thermal mass for temperature stability. Then put em in a small soft-side cooler in the back of the fridge or at the bottom of the deep freezer for the next few decades.
If you are worried about minor temp fluctuations add some thermal mass. I doubt it’s an issue unless you are routinely transitioning above/below freezing.
I love your thought and execution!
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Thanks for the compliment! I will look into thermal mass as a concept never really thought about that end of it, someone else recommended a freezer pack so maybe that would work better than the water? (just a thought!)
I really like the amber bottles I got, only downside is if you overtighten it can be hard to get the lid back on correctly (metal cap / glass jar, but has a plastic stopper to help keep moisture out for each bottle)
I realized putting the hygrometer in the fridge directly might not replicate the temp of where the seeds are stored as well, so I quickly threw the hygrometer back in the fridge with a silica packet inside of a ziplock bag to try and mimic the seed storage more closely.
By not exposing it to excess moisture / inside the fridge directly vs the ziplock i’m hoping that will show some improvement in humidity or at least record it more accurately to what the seeds would be in long term. I don’t open the fridge ever except to put new seeds in and then right now to add the hygrometer for measuring purposes.
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I’ve been storing packs 5-10 at a time in their own vacuum sealed packages with dessicant/indicator. When I get more packs, I just make a new vacuum bag and then I only need to open old storage bags when I want to retrieve something.
I use a spreadsheet to track which bag each pack is in.
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Ooh good point!
That reminds me, same here with the spreadsheet (mines actually a list on onedrive but I’m going to make a excel backup now that you mention it!)
I also have stickers on the top of the jars with a number assigned, and just started using a label maker to label them that way as well (in case the ink fades or smudges in the cold temps, I’d still be able to read what strain it was). I try to include when/where they were born when available but that’s not always possible 
Hope this helps anyone!
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