1. There are many options for water quality testing. I think most people on the forum are using something like a master test kit (for aquariums) has test tubes and bottles of drops along with instruction cards, that tests for pH (two different ranges), Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. Seems reasonably accurate within the ranges it's meant for and provides a fair number of tests for the price. There are all sorts of other test kits for most other paramiters but the above listed ones are what most people are doing (would you jump off a bridge after us?) There are also electronic meters you can get, they tend to cost more and be ware of hidden costs of probe replacement, cleaning solutions, storage solutions, calibration solutions etc. I have a electric pH tester that seems to have gone belly up and only reads 7 now too and no amount of soaking in the special solution and trying to re-calibrate seems to do anything. It was cheap so I guess you get what you pay for.
2. I don't know, I got a couple little kids science kits that can do a couple DO tests to play with but otherwise I'm not set up to test that.
3. You can probably get those at any hydroponics store and probably off the internet but they aren't very accurate.
I've gotten and used the simple cheap pH test strips, they only seem accurate as extremes are approached anywhere between 5.5 and 8.5, they always seem to read 7.
4. pH can be adjusted many ways but remember to always do it slowly and carefully especially if you have fish or plants in the system as they don't like pH bouncing. Egg shells, shell grit as noted before are a pretty good way to help buffer up as they are not likely to cause a major overshoot in pH. Once a system has cycled, I've come to expect that you are unlikely to need much to bring pH down (My water comes out of the well with a pH around 7 which rises to 8 as the CO2 escapes with aeration but after only a few weeks of cycling my system will bring that down to 7 again on it's own.) But if you need to bring it down something like lemmon juice or vinegar might help but only temporarily, be very careful with it. I Never did anything to my AP system to bring the pH down and cycling got going fine at the higher pH of 8.
Correcting other results? Like what? Too much Ammonia, Nitrate, or Nitrite and you have fish in the system usually calls for some partial water changes untill things are under control.
Not enough DO, add an air stone and air pump. (this can also help your fish some in the event of high ammonia readings etc.)
5. What Steve said.
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