It does not matter whether you are wearing the weight in the form of lead or a negatively bouyant tank. I use steel tansk for the same purpose - to reduce the amount of weight I have to carry on a weight belt or in weight integrated pockets.David P:
The difference is that the weights are usually readily ditchable while the tank normally is not. On a deep dive where the wet suit will lose a lot of it's bouyancy, you need a wing with enough lift to keep you neutral at the bottom. Plus, you should make sure that you can swim you and your gear up with the wing empty in the event it ever fails. If you can't do this, you need to have some type of redundant lift. This could be in the form of a double bladder wing or a lift bag.
Ditchable weight is the more traditional menas to achieve bouyancy in an emergency as you can drop the weight and ascend to the surface. This is more or less acceptable in a shallow recreational setting but could be a major problem in a deep or technical setting as dumping weights means you will be going all the way to the surface and that may equal getting bent.
So personally, I see no downside to carrying the needed weight in the form of a negatively bouyant tank as opposed to lead weights. Just take care to ensure you are not overweighted as that will aggravate the problem in an emergency.
) and tank bands. I rented 2 al80's and a single reg - enter the cheater bar. I dove this religiously for many weekends. The dives were 170ft. mine (overhead) dives in 40deg. water!! How did we ever survive ??
