Counting the days of flowering

Do you count the days of flowering from the time you change the light cycle, or from the time you see bud developing?

When they show sex. Transition from veg to flower varies from plant to plant, depends on the sexual maturity of the plant, blah blah blah.

So yeah, when it shows male/female.

I am in day 20 of vegging 5 clones that I had purchased. Past few days I have seen the development of calyx's. Flowering has technically started??

Nope. If your plants are showing male or female pre-flowers they are sexually mature and flowering will start almost immediately when you change over. If your plants are still immature and you flower anyway, its necessary to wait until the plants have sexed.

If you're in 12/12, male or female signs have showed, you're flowering. People can argue that it starts 2 days after or other horse shit, for all practical purposes 12/12 and hairs/balls is flower power.

Odd. I am in 18/6 and i have seen a calyx form on one of my trainwrecks. They have been topped and fimmed both, could this have caused some hormonal imbalance?

No, it's not. I dont think your clones are flowering, clones usually come from a mature plant, a mature plant puts out preflowers. after rooting and vegging for a bit your cuttings are now plants and since they are already mature they've started putting out preflowers. The first day of flowering depends, if your plant is mature when put into flower you can pretty much start your count the first day of 12/12 since the plant is ready and the flowering hormone will start the process as soon as its level of flowering hormone reaches the threshhold needed to do so day 1, you might not see it right away, but its happening. If your plant is not mature before flipping you count from when they first start putting out pistils or balls since they will still need to finish maturing and then they start the flowering process.

That was really informative. I greatly appreciate it man.