Hi, an australian opinion here!
as1777 is a current australian standard - you should be able to take this in to a fire station and get it tested, no problem. The tank was manufacutred in 1983, and is an alloy tank - hence you will need both a hydrostatic test, and an eddy current test. It's water content is 11.25L (that's what that WC 11.25 kg means), and its working pressure is 224 bar (that's the blurry WP 22.4 MPA stamp). Test pressure is 345 bar (that's the T34.5 MPA stamp). The type of valve will limit fill pressures to 207 bar (under australian standards), but treatment will differ from one dive store to the next.
This is a bog-standard alloy-88. I strongly suspect that the valve on this tank is not the original valve - you have a decomissioned J valve fitted (not that there is anything wrong with using these, I have a couple of O2 stages with J-valves fitted), which were generally older than 1983. The valve looks a bit corroded externally - I'd be tempted to drain it, pull the valve off, and give it a quick inspeciton before spending my $$ on a hydro.
A hydro and eddy current test should set you back $30-$40 aussie. You might need to pay a bit more for a valve service. I'd punt that there is about a 10-15% chance that it will fail the eddy current test due to sustained load cracking in the neck. If you are really put off by the J-valve, grab a replacement valve off ebay. If it was me, and I needed another alloy tank, I'd take the punt and get it tested. If I didn't need it, I'd take the punt, get it tested, and flog it on ebay - in test it should go for about $160-$200 aussie.
For a cost comparison, you can get a 12.2 litre, 232 bar steel tank (100 cubic foot) delivered to your door for $350aussie, and an 80 cf alloy for $229 delivered. These prices are from
www.diveimports.com. My personal opinion is that the steels are a much nicer tank to dive with, and I now snob the alloys
Whilst Scubaboard is a great source of knowledge for dive gear, the information tends to be very focussed on the US and Canada. For most things, this is directly transferrable to equipment in Australia. However, tanks is one area where there are some big differences between the US and Australia - for example, we have annual hydro tests to contend with, but have had also had the "new" style steel tanks that are all the rage available for about 15 years!
Moral of the story - don't listen too much to what's said by the sepos here about tanks! Our tank standards are one area where the rules are very different between Australia and the US!
Edited to refer to the right forum!
