Make your Own Poop Float

[JuliusSqueezer]

Not to be confused with rootbeer or coke floats...PLEASE!

I have been asked several times how to do a fecal exam at home. I will try and cover the basics here as best as I can. But be warned. There are a lot of things floating around in snake poop that freaks people out. Mostly rodent hair. Bit's of rodent hair looks kinda like worms under a microscope. Normally you won't find worms in a fecal. Usually just eggs and occasional larva...but eggs are what you are looking for. Plant cells and spirals, bug legs and other misc parts found in the feces of animals that eat such things can also produce some pseudoparasites. Yeast cells look an aweful lot like roundworm eggs. Air bubbles look like roundworm eggs except in reverse...roundworm eggs have a dark nucleus...airbubbles are light in the middle and dark on the edges. It is a good idea to find a good book to reference so you can properly ID what you are looking for.

Equipment needed:

Microscope with a light source and a moveable stage. It doesn't have to be an expensive one. It does have to have at least 100x though and 400x is great. 1000 and up is magnificant to have but you will never use it.

Slides and cover slips

test tube rack and some sterile test tubes

sterile mixing jar and something like a swizzle stick to stir and mash and otherwise degrade poop into mush.

floating solution (fecasol) which is just a name brand of sodium nitrate. Will plain water work? No. eggs are heavier than water and do not float. Is there a way to make this stuff at home? Yes and it's painfully easy. It takes about 24 hours to make at home. Get a clean jar fill it most of the way up with water (tap water is dandy) Pour table salt in and stir. wait awhile...stir some more...when all the salt is desolved, pour in some more and stir. keep doing this till it won't disolve any more salt. You now have a saline solution that is heavier than parasite eggs and they will now float on it. carefully pour this into another jar leaving the sediment behind. This solution will dehydrate your samples if you don't work fast too so ...work fast.

put your poop sample in a mixing jar and pour a bit of solution in...smash and stir till it looks like your snake has been eating too many 2 week old bean burritos then scoop some into a test tube. and fill the test tube with the solution that you have or made till it is just short of spilling over the rim. There should be a bubble on top that is visible above the rim of the test tube at eyelevel. place a cover slip over the bubble. It should make contact with the liquid. Wait 20 minutes and gently lift the slip off keeping it level and be careful that the drop of liquid on the underside doesn't drip off. Quickly but carefully place it on a slide. If there were parasite eggs in the stool then they will be eagerly awaiting your discovery on your slide now. I can't stress how important it is to properly identify what you find before medicating or even if they should be medicated. But anyway it's loads of fun and you get to play in poop!

[reptigirl04]

LOL, All this time i've been letting the vet have all the fun...
So you do this at home? Would you mind me asking what kind of microscope you have, magnification and stuff?

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[thetupak]

hey that sounds cool i dont think my rtb has parasites but id like to try it just for fun lol

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[JuliusSqueezer]

I have 2 now. I had 4 but I gave a couple away. BW has one of my old ones. I forgot who has the other one lol.

I use the Bristoline for doing fecals. It is 40x 100x 400x and 1000x That's with 10x eyepieces. If you use 20x eyepieces it doubles all of those. If you use 1x eye pieces, it is 4x 1ox, 40x and 100x. All I have are 10x eyepieces.

Ths smaller scope is made for viewing coins and gemstones. It is handy for examining anything you can get between the stage and the objective though like hard to see skin problems, retained eyecaps etc... It has a 2x objective and 10x eye pieces so it is set at 20x. This microscope is useless for fecals.

Sorry for my cluttered work station. It's right inside the door from my house to my snakeroom and a lot of crap gets tossed out that door for me to deal with later.

[reptigirl04]

Thanks for the info and pics, JS.

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[AnAcOnDaMaN]

Those a compound light microscopes right?

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[NicoleRussell]

can you make this a sticky so I have it for when I get my mic?

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[telefrag]

When I first saw this subject line, I thought it was going to recommend eating more fiber.

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[reptigirl04]

LMAO!!

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[eddie]

Nicole, look just above the post here and click on 'add to favorites'.
It will sticky it to your list of RTB faves saved just for you here onsite.

Also.. this is why he is the guru.. not from his teenage years of flipping pattys looking for shrooms

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[NicoleRussell]

thanks eddie

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[JuliusSqueezer]

lol frag...that was funny stuff. I even made that stupid snorting sound.

I had to correct a typo. The Bristoline is up to 1000x the way I have it equiped..I left off a zero.

Another tip. You can buy stain kits to stain your samples to get better contrast to see them better...messy stuff. Lots of fun. BUT a drop of iodine does the same thing. just put a drop on the slide and place the wet cover with the poop on it right on top of the drop of iodine. I bought some cool stain jars that hold the slides still and let's you stain the whole slide...but that's just annoying and a well placed drop of blue stuff is much less trouble.

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[eddie]

lol frag...that was funny stuff. I even made that stupid snorting sound.

Dang Brett, you been snortin a lot this week

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Those a compound light microscopes right?

I suppose any microscope made since the caveman days fall in that group...before compound microscopes were the old simple one lens jobs that were obsolete even when they were all they had. I'd like to have one though in good shape. They are quite collectable.

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[NicoleRussell]

JS you are like the professor on Gilligan's Island----with a little Billy Crystal mixed in :P

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Bah...I get more chicks than either of them lol

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[Pythons_N_Boas]

ummmm, as much as i love playing with snake poop. i think il leave it up to my vet

lol maby ill try it someday.

thanks for the tips

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[muzixman]

"It is a good idea to find a good book to reference so you can properly ID what you are looking for." Thanks where would you get a good reference book and or what is a good one.

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[JuliusSqueezer]

Reptile and amphibian Parasites by Rundquist is a good basic little book. Search your local bookstores and libraries ....google search, amazon.com, ebay, ....all kinds of resources for finding books online.

Just a general book on parasites ...make sure it has photos. Most of the parasites that reptiles get are also found in mammals so all reference doesn't have to be from a reptile book. roundworms are roundworms. Flukes are flukes. It doesn't matter what they came out of, they look the same, smell the same and probably taste the same.

[muzixman]

LOL Thanks

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