Can Old Scuba tanks be used for CO2?

Paintball Co2 tank compatible with air?

• I'm new to paintball, and I recently purchased a used gun off of eBay. This gun came with a 20 oz Co2 tank. I heard that using Co2 is unhealthy for paintball guns; air is a much cheaper and efficient alternative. I've been looking at some air tanks online, and they are extremely expensive. I was wondering if I could just purchase an adapter for my Co2 tank that will allow me to fill it with air. Is this a good idea? Is this a dangerous method? Thanks

• Answer:

  You heard wrong. Paintball guns were originally designed to run exclusively on CO2. To this day, most paintball guns can handle it just fine, and CO2 still gives more efficiency per tank fill than the same volume of compressed air does. Filling a CO2 tank with compressed air will cause the burst disk (safety feature) to fail before the tank is even half full. If you disable the burst disk, you will most likely die as the full tank explodes with roughly the same force as 5-8 sticks of dynamite, plus shrapnel. If you survive, you will spend the ensuing 3-5 years in federal prison.