Diving sidemount with stages - top or bottom?

[Aotus]

Where do you put your stages and why? Also, where do you do your diving? It's come to my attention that there is a regional factor that may or may not reflect different challenges, e.g., flow and fragile formations.

[WJH]

Deco bottles on bottom, where they can easily be identified and/or dropped and picked up on the fly. Stage bottles (bottom mix) on the top, where they can ride without being handled. And I typically don't have a stage unless I already have 2 deco bottles.

WJH

[Aotus]

Stage bottles (bottom mix) on the top, where they can ride without being handled. And I typically don't have a stage unless I already have 2 deco bottles.

so when you carry stages, you don't doff/don them? they stay put?

[bamafan]

The first two stages I mount on top. I generally just clip off the top bungee to a door handle for anymore than 2 stages. Sometimes when I am feeling lazy and in a high flow cave where you are basically floating out I will just clip the used stage to a chest d ring and just carry it underneath me.

[Aotus]

so that's one for TOP (+deco gas bottom) (= option 1) and one TOP FIRST (bottom second and "if lazy")(= option 3). I guess I should have asked around a bit more before I wrote the poll options.

[Aotus]

NOTE: the query posed by this thread overlaps with the content in the thread started by RN in 2013 re: top/bottom mounted deco bottles (here). There, most said they bottom-mount deco bottles, with some pointing out that sometimes conditions benefit top-mounting them. Here, the inquiry is about stages specifically, but this may be influenced by where and whether you are carrying deco bottles. It would be useful to point out whether this is a factor that has influenced your decision about where your stages sit.

Also, I hope the poll will shed greater light on regional trends and get more feedback regarding the functional differences in the methods given varying conditions. So please share where you do most of your stage diving with your explanations.

[nakatomi]

Where do you put your stages and why? Also, where do you do your diving? It's come to my attention that there is a regional factor that may or may not reflect different challenges, e.g., flow and fragile formations.

There are a lot of challenges that may mandate a streamlined and well thought-out way of attaching stage tanks.
Low passages and bedding planes, stuff to break off the ceiling or the floor, flow, strong flow and epic flow come to mind. And there are always the buddies GoPro's that may show the world how your existing configuration looks, which may warrant a change too

I'm using Rob's top mounted way of attaching the stage tanks. Deco tanks (40cuft) are bottom mounted to the left front when breathed and clipped to the rails on the buttplate when not in use.
Additional full stage tanks (#3 and #4) are attached to the butt plate for transport. When used, they are rotated and switched with the top mounted tanks.
Tanks (deco or stage) that have been breathed down to where they float up, are either top mounted (which keeps the 80s down even when empty), or moved to the front (where when empty, they ride up against the SM tanks).

[Aotus]

246 views, 10 votes....that's got to be a record.

[lv2dive]

Every time someone votes the thread appears at the top of unread thead so people may think a new post has been written. Does that help explain the views to votes ratio?

246 views, 10 votes....that's got to be a record.

[Aotus]

It is an annoying feature