doing fecals?

[slaytonp]

Ryan's right, of course. I was just giving one flotation procedure because you were looking for it. I can't imagine bothering to do this on something the size of dart feces, or hoping anything is left to look at by the time one went through all of this. I've never done any of the extensive procedures on anything but human or mammal feces. I should think a direct wet mount of a very fresh specimen mixed with a little saline and perhaps a drop of iodine stain on a second mount would be the most practical, as has been mentioned. Even if you do see some possible protozoans, you can't be sure they are actually pathogens without some knowledge of what you're looking at. White blood cells, red blood cells (which in frogs are nucleated and can resemble ova) are other artifacts that might be confusing. It might be fun to do thin direct smears, dry and fix with 95% methanol (just dip in and dry) then stain with Wright's or Giemsa to look for these. Significant numbers of blood cells would also indicate a pathogenic process in the gut and would alert you to look more carefully for a cause. These are just suggestions of different things to try out as you learn. The first thing is to learn with any microscopy is what "normal" looks like, and how to identify the various artifacts, so you wouldn't really be wasting your time if you have access to a lab and the materials.

During my own active career, I was able to do some lectures and microbiology/hematology at the schools and invite high school biology students and interested parties into our clinical lab and help them with different projects as part of our "community education/PR budget." After the advent of HIV and AIDS however, lab regulations became so over the top as to be nearly prohibitive of this practice. The powers that be also became paranoid about possible accidents and liability, so by the time I retired, anything we did with students got to be pretty sneaky. So be extra careful and courteous about any facilities you are allowed access to.