So I was going to pull the trigger on a few extra bits and pieces of equipment for developing - mainly some air reduction bottles for storing chemicals plus some photoflo. It just occurred to me I should try and be a bit more frugal and wanted to quiz you all. I've always stored fixer and mixed dev in those air reduction bottles and never really thought to do otherwise. I was going to order a couple from Vanbar but I was thinking that $40 for a couple of plastic bottles plus some photoflo seemed like a lot of money.
As for photoflo, I suspect I can get away with not using it as the water in Darwin is very, very soft and so it tends not to stick to the negatives when I hang it up anyway. So that's $6 saved. My concern about not using air reduction bottles is fixer and developer going off if not used in time. Am I right in thinking that or am I being a bit paranoid? To be fair, my Ultrafin bottle was not entirely full and was sat in a shipping container for best part of 4 months and that's working fine despite being very, very slightly yellow.
And of course, if anyone has any other useful tips on not spending money, that would be great too! I'm already using just water as a stop bath (which I've been doing for some time now) and that has been fine for me, even when reusing fixer. $8 saved!