Dome port o-ring maintenance

Hi all,

I am fairly new to UW photography, but I've been practicing a lot lately with a new setup I bought. I was hoping you could give me some advice regarding the o-ring in the dome port. Some people I've talked to say they take the dome off after every dive to clean and lubricate the o-ring, while others say that is not really necessary if you do not change the dome out for another port (so as long as it stays on the housing, there's no need to clean and lubricate the o-ring).

Which method is best? I don't mind taking it out after every dive, but if it's not really necessary I prefer to leave it in. Don't know if this is relevant information at all, but I use a Nauticam housing for Olympus EM-1 mkII with a ZEN 170mm dome port.

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

In my opinion, some things are best left alone. Unless you are frequently changing ports, I would leave the port on and only take it off every few months for a cleaning and o-ring lube before putting it back together.

Sometimes fiddling with something is the best way to cause a problem. People don't remove regulator hoses after each dive (as far as I've ever seen).

Since I do open the housing after each dive, I do clean and lube that o-ring for every dive, but that's because it gets opened every dive. As I only have one port, I leave it on. If it's not leaking it's good. The only worry would be salt build-up over time, but that's partly a function of not rinsing sufficiently and not checking it (visual inspection) every dive.

I would not touch it.

I leave mine well alone and just check there is no fluff or hairs etc and its clean.

We take our housings down at the end of a dive trip and clean all rings. During the trip I only clean port rings if changing ports. Depending on amount of fine sand around the main housing ring I may clean it every opening or go up to 4-5 openings before cleaning.

Both housings have vacuum systems that keeps my my confidence level high.

I as a rule just do a visual as bear 35.

Also keep an eye out for the conditions of where your diving as I was recently in Holland Zealand Delta and they had this fine sandy silty type residue and that did cause a few problems as I never noticed it straight away, {by then it was too late}.

I just use a clean tissue to wipe away any excess water and another to clean both surfaces when i put everything back together again.

Happy Days.

Goose