Maria25:3. I am 5'10" and 150# how much weight should I carry? I am fine at the bottom hanging out. It is ascending and descending.
We can't tell you how much weight you need. It's not only a function of your body buoyancy but also that of your equipment. What you should be doing is learning to adjust it in the water. Checking and adjusting weighting is a required part of the course.
The fact is that you can control a descent even over weighted. In the beginning of a dive you will always be overweighted by at least the weight of the breathing gas that you carry and for those divers who are carrying a lot of gas that can mean being very overweght.
Manageing that weight is a matter of weight placement and buoyancy control technique.
4. So if I get to the bottom this is where I should play around with ascending and gliding?
Maria
NO. NO. NO. What you state here is a good description of how it's usually taught and is in line with some of the advice that you've recieved here but I strongly disagree with it.
In my experience, teaching and learning buoyancy control is easiest when you start at the surface. The idea is to never get too negative in the first place. Hint...you can check your weighting and learn the right way to start a descent all at the same time.
When you start a decent you DO NOT need to dump all your BC air. Remember you are always overweighted by the weight of the breathing gas you carry. Dumping it all just leads to an uncontrolled descent and leaves you plastered to the bottom where you then have to fiddle with putting air back in again. That's backwards, makes no sense at all and there isn't any need for it. You dump just enough to get neutral at the surface. Then all you need do is exhale a bit and you're on your way down (dump a little more if you want to drop fast but that's for after you learn how.). From there you can slow or halt your descent with breath control...of course as your wet suit compresses you will need to add a bit of air to your bc in order to stay close to neutral.
When descending in this manor you can stop anyplace you wish and maintain that position. That's what diving is huh?
Another problem divers have with descents is that they have trouble keeping balanced...they tip back/forward or to the side and they move arms and legs to keep balanced...and essentially swim back to the surface. Getting your trim somewhat under control near the surface gets this taken care of up front. I find that's easiest to do by paying some attention to weight placement and spending some time learning and practicing proper body position on dry land before even going in the water. It helps even more if you have an instructor who will get you away from those goofy vertical descents. It's one thing to have your head higher than your feet if that makes equalizing easier and an absurd extreme to have students trying to control their descent speed when they are positioned like a torpedo racing for the bottom. Flatten out some. Not only will your descent be easier to control but when you get to the depth where you want to halt your descent (hopefully before hitting the bottom), you will already be in a swimming position. It also puts your fins behind you where you can use them for controlling position without shoving you back to the surface.
Don't feel too bad. The backwards way this stuff is usually taught wreaks havoc with lots of students and even hurts lots of ears. Having your buoyancy under controlled starting at the surface SAVES the ears and makes you look and feel like a diver in the water. Rocks drop to the bottom...divers go where they want.