Diving shallow on Nitrox.

[tridacna]

I have access to nitrox for a negligible extra cost

Enough said...except you're really lucky. Where I''m from, that's definitely not the case.

 

[halocline]

Chose the breathing gas appropriate for the dive.

Gee, thanks for the advice!

 

[boulderjohn]

The issue of price for nitrox is more of an issue in some places than in others. One of my students told me that where he comes from, the local shops charge $35 for an AL 80 nitrox fill (32%). Where we dive for our classes, there is nothing available locally, so I bring the helium and oxygen we use, and we fill out on the prairie out of the back of a van. If he were to get a 32% fill from me there, I would charge about $2.50, for the oxygen, after which he would go to the local fill shop and get it topped off for $5.00. At that price, you can dive nitrox all you want. At $35 a tank, not so much.

 

[Yancey M]

Wow $35!!!! That's crazy. It's $4 extra at my LDS to get a nitrox fill and that's any size tank, regardless if it's my wife's HP100s or my HP130s. $35 would make it pretty difficult to dive on a regular basis especially when I always dive on nitrox.

But to stay on subject I always dive nitrox mostly because I get my tanks filled after every dive with EAN 36 because it takes me about thirty minute to get to my LDS and I want my tanks full and ready when I want to go diving, which is generally multiple dives. And I don't seem to get cottonmouth as bad when diving nitrox over air.

 

[Nemrod]

I'm one of them. I can't tell you if it's "real" or "placebo". When a dive trip costs 80ish dollars plus gas plus food for a dive day, the $2 extra I pay for a tank of nitrox at my LDS is totally not significant. I do believe I feel less tired after diving on nitrox, even at shallow depths. I can't quantify it better than that, and given the miniscule extra cost, I really don't care too much to look into it.

I'll only dive air if I'm somewhere like key largo where they have the bizarre practice of vastly more (by the cuft for example) or if I just can't get it at all.

Of course if it were only $2 everywhere but I have paid as much as $20 for nitrox per tank.

I am not sure it is placebo effect anymore, as much as I was, of course, I see no relevant studies making the case that it is not placebo. Maybe it is oxygen therapy. I think cherry flavored nitrox or vanilla would be awesome.

N

 

[MaxBottomtime]

The incidence of DCS diving on air is less than .01% of dives made. Breathing nitrox will reduce that risk, but by less than a single percentage point. There is no safety advantage to diving nitrox versus air. Fooling you computer by setting it for air while breathing nitrox does not increase your safety, it only reduces your bottom time. If you were to have an accident and had to go to a chamber the first thing they would look at is your computer. Why not set it to the gas you're actually breathing?

 

[Scuba Legends]

I read all some answers here. not all (they are too many)

I don´t know if someone considered there are some situations why someone would be using Nitrox at 20 ft.

One i miss here is medical reasons. In my career i met some people that either had DCS previously or other health issues and the doctor allowed them to dive only with Nitrox.

The rest is well answer already

Happy Bubbles

Gery #scubalegends

 

[ScubaGypsy]

Two more situations where using nitrox during shallow dives is preferred includes diving at altitude and/or diving after having a few pops the previous night.

 

[Colliam7]

***************************MOD POST****************************
A number of posts have been moved to a new / separate thread (also in Basic Scuba Discussions), focused on Tissue stress and the potential benefits of diving enriched air. That discussion is useful and informative, but was sufficiently different from the original question posed at the beginning of this thread, to justify creation of a separate thread.
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[LariatAdvance]

I dive often on the rock jetty when I want to get wet but can't go on a "real" dive in the ocean. Depth is 36 feet, maybe 40 max if you get in a hole on the bottom. I dive nitrox there because that's just what I have in the tank. I get it refilled after every dive, so as sure as I fill it with air planning a 30 foot dive later, a charter will come up and I'd wish I had nitrox.

It isn't the depth that matters to me. There's no way I could stay under the total 140 minutes of no deco time with a tank of air anyway. I run out of both nitrox and air before I run out of minutes at that shallow depth.