Another mean for discovering the capacitance is to construct a relaxation oscillator with an opamp. The frequency output ^-1 will give you the period of the RC product.
The opamp positive input must be set to 63% of the supply voltage...
As the water is leaky a mean to provide the current needed is to use a low R value. Thus a simple opamp relaxation is not enough, you need a Half bridge to boost the opamp current.
I believe this will give out the best results... if correctly used.
The opamp must be supplied with the same voltage or so going into the bridge.... So one could use two batteries, a full wave bridge rectifier from a variac and using a ground connection to split the DC output into positive and negative between two big capacitors at the dc output...