Great advise Ben - exactly what I was looking for. Had never heard of using a film leader to test fixer which is ingenious, but reading the other comments seems to be a common practice. Appears I have been dumping good chemicals all these years!
Bill - not too much info - I get the concepts and while the two stage fixer is not something I would use now, its good to know these solutions as I might decide to use them in the future and even if I never use the method, I find the broader understanding useful.
Vincent - the fixer check is something i've seen and am considering it for my print bath. As stated i'm shooting more and more film these days but most of it gets scanned. However, I have a dark room in the loft so it could be useful in a fixer that doesn't get used much. That said - I should have lots of film leaders (now i'm going to start saing them) so i'll see how I get on with those.
rossb - I just ordered some HC110 last week as been reading good things about it, although using up my current Ilfotec stock first. I got three young kids so a drawer full of baby syringes!! Also picked up some of the Kodak stop bath as it dilutes 1:63 which seems very economical, plus the Ilfostop seems to grow some kind of mould jelly in the container which I have to filter with coffee filters - so hope the Kodak stop doesnt do this!
Thanks all for the advise - at the moment I'm just looking for an easy workflow that produces uniform results on my negs.
One last question however: As I mentioned, I currently mix in 5L containers. I easily use this in 6 months, although this might change now I'm not throwing it all down the sink! However, I've found in the past that shelf life is often much longer than that stated on the labell. Do you think its a good idea to invest in some smaller containers? I suppose it cant hurt for the small price of some 1L jars for stop and fox (will probably still use 5L for developer as I will certainly use that in 6 months).
Thanks again all.