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Can you suppress a spell duration (or magical item) so that you can effectively pause the duration of it?
I have a custom item with a once-per-day effect, and the duration has a (d) on it, meaning I can dismiss it. I'd like to pause the effect temporarily to not use up the remaining duration unnecessarily, but I don't want to dismiss it because it'll be a whole day before I can use that effect again.
In general, no. There is no general “ability to pause” built into the magic rules of D&D 3.5e. Generally, a duration is how long the effect lasts after the spell is cast or the item's ability is activated. Unless the spell or ability specifically includes a method of pausing the effect, it can't be. Even stopping an effect is often not under the caster's control, because even that little bit of control has to be explicitly granted.
As a general rule of thumb, spells and effects do what they say and nothing more or less. If the general magic rules plus the description of the particular spell/effect don't provide a way of doing something, the spell/effect doesn't do that something. Other spells might be able to affect the first spell/effect and be used to do so, but they will also explicitly say that they're capable of doing so. (For example, contingency can alter how another spell works, and it says clearly how.)
Yes, but not easily
If you're looking for the general rules on how spells work, @SevenSidedDie's answer is correct and complete.
If you're looking for a method of pausing durations, it's probably not worth it.
If it's really important to you though, Temporal Stasis's effect states "For the creature, time ceases to flow and its condition becomes fixed." What condition becoming fixed means is not explained in detail, but it probably does pause durations of any spells on that creature.
Similarly, Time Stop will effectively pause all spells' durations for 1d4+1 rounds; shoving a spell's target into a plane with a radically slower time trait will cause it to take longer to expire, etc.
It is unlikely that spending ninth-level spell slots to slightly extend othe spells' durations is a good plan though.
Talk to your DM; with item-creation nearly anything is possible. For example, the descriptions of the Cloak of Etherealness (10 min/day not continuous) differs wildly from the spell used for its' creation, Ethereal Jaunt (1 round/lvl (D))
I would use table 7-33 in the DMG, although that doesn't make sense for the cloak, because it would sum up to a lot more (lvl7xCL13x2000gp = 182.000 gp), where the cloak's only listed at 55.000 gp. Even the [command word + use-activated / charges per day] doesn't add up in my book, but maybe it's because I just can't count properly.
Whatever the case, it is possible because it happens with Core Wondrous Items.
