Any special precautions for caring for galvanized tanks?

[Jimmer]

I was looking to get another steel 72 to double up my single painted 72. My instructor told me to sort through his collection of 72's that he uses in the pool, and he suggested I take the 2 glavanized ones he had. We knocked the boots off since they need to be hydro'd and one has a very small patch of surface rust under the boot. Is there any special precautions or procedures for taking care of this finish, or can I just use a spray on cold galvanizing product after clearing up the rust?

 

[Bruce3]

remove boot after every dive

 

[DennisW]

Agreed, take off the boot after each dive and rinse the tank thoroughly. If you find any surface rust, clean it off and spray a bit of cold galvanize over the area. You can find this in the paint section of any hardware store. Since you mentioned this already, you know about it. Make sure the tank monkey at the dive shop doesn't overfill your ST 72's to 3000 lbs. They tend to do that if they are inexperienced. Just watch the tanks as they are getting filled, make sure they open the valve to blow out any water that may be in the valve before they fill the tank. A good thing for any tank.

 

[Jimmer]

Good advice guys. I managed to scramble up a set of the open bottom self draining boots, and these tanks will never see salt water, so I don't think it shouldn't be too hard to keep them in good shape. As for the tank monkeys, fortunetly my LDS doesn't have any lower level primates working there at all, but I will definetly be sure to watch for that if I get them filled elsewhere.

 

[Luis H]

I use the open bottom boots and I remove them every once in a while to inspect and touch up with galvanizing paint if needed. I dive in salt water, so I rinse the tank and /or soak the bottom. This seems to work well.

Oh... and the advise to make sure to blow some air out of the valve connection (and filler whip) in order to dry and clean it is extremely important.