in_cavediver
Contributor
Damselfish:I don't think it matters too much at a resort where it's all their tanks, as long as it's obvious and something that will be well understood (sticking with the standard bright green seems good, Barney purple not so much.) Stickers seem to be a pretty good and cheap way of accomplishing it, and when you're talking assorted personal tanks there's something to be said for standards - it's unlikely but someone diving air could have green tanks just because they liked them or green caps because that's just what they happened to buy. Ideally places that don't do the "standard" point it out in briefings. I think places that do colored caps or tanks do it because the stickers wear off in really heavy use, I've seen tanks with Nitrox stickers so worn off you could barely tell they'd been there. (I've also seen an op tie that bright green crime-scene type tape stuff around the neck, IMO that can get ripped off too easily to be reliable.)
Again, you hit the crux of my arguement. Large dive ops that have many tanks aren't the problem. Its the smaller ops that have fewer tanks and more importantly cater to divers with there own gear. This is wear the whole standard breaks down.
There are dive agencies out there who advocate a very strict tank marking scheme thats totally at odds with the green/yellow band. This one fact alone makes the 'standard' not a 'standard'. The general notion that if it doesn't have a nitrox band then its air is dangerous. I don't mark my tanks with the green stickers even though 7 of my 10 tanks are 02 clean. Given that, three sets of doubles still have 32%, 1 80 is 50/50 and 1 80 is 100%. If some poor schmuck decided to grab one of my tanks to dive, he could be in a world of hurt. (Granted he shouldn't grab my tanks to start with but for some reason, some divers think it AOK to just grab any old tank)
As I have said all along, we need to give divers the information. Its not complex. Its not difficult and the equipment required is really cheap. (sub $100 cheap)