# Fecal Sample questions (photos)



## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

Hey, I took a "chunk" to work, where I have access to some cool equipment and instruments. These are images of a fresh fecal sample of bastimentos from Panama. I've got them in quarantine right now. I was expecting their crap to be crawling with all types of nasty microbes as they're coming from the wild. I didn't even see a single nematode! 

This is a 2nd fecal where I did not see anything that would jump at me. Normally I can see all the larger suspects with a 10x, 20x without a problem. On this fecal I used 60x because there was nothing larger moving. At 60x I'm looking at single celled protozoa. 

Look at this parmecium like thing.

1st Image

this 2nd one I have no idea what it is. It might be just a weird fly part, but looks a bit odd so I took a picture. It was not moving. Any ideas?

2nd Image

I'll do another few samples over the next few days. Typically I can see all kinds of microbes crawling around at 20x or 40x without a problem.


Thanks
Marty

EDIT: Fixed links - sorry about that. Ever since I change hosting I had nothing but trouble


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## mydumname (Dec 24, 2004)

for some reason they won't open for me.


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## Dancing frogs (Feb 20, 2004)

me either


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## Guest (Feb 14, 2005)

Marty,

Sweet pics!! No clue what we are looking at but still very interesting to see the makeup of fecals.

-Matt


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## El_Rana (May 29, 2004)

.....COOL! Maybe someone can i.d. 'em?


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## mydumname (Dec 24, 2004)

Now it works. Looks, umm, yeah, no clue. I have seen things under microscope, but not able to identify things.


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## kleinhanz (Oct 18, 2004)

it sorta (2nd pic) reminded me of part of a springtail. What insect are you feeding your frogs? 


Note: I have NO experince looking at fecals under a microscope, just thought I would ask


-rob


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

At that magnification you'd be looking at the springtail's eye lashes :lol:




kleinhanz said:


> it sorta (2nd pic) reminded me of part of a springtail. What insect are you feeding your frogs?
> 
> 
> Note: I have NO experince looking at fecals under a microscope, just thought I would ask
> ...


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## kleinhanz (Oct 18, 2004)

lol, your right. I was just thinking it looked like a subpart of a subpart.

I told you I had NO experieince but I enjoyed the photos!


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

Very timely because we've been debating this subject on frognet. I am not trained to ID this kind of thing but compare some of the stuff in your images with this one: http://www.marvistavet.com/html/coccidia.html One of the assertions in the debate has been that wc pumilio are coming in clean of coccidia but developing infections later in captivity. Hopefully a well qualified person will look at these images and help us out here.


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## vet_boy77 (Feb 10, 2005)

Great pics! I definitely think we should have more microscope pictures. 

Regarding pic 1, IMHO, the outlines could be a lot of things including normal protozoals and/or ciliates, or fecal debris. It does not immediately strike me as a coccidian, however, since I cannot discern the size, depth, focus, presence of spores, etc. from this picture, I will have to remain undecided. Are there many of these shapes around? In a microscope context, is this thing large or small? Was it moving when you found it?

Pic 2 is also a stumper, but, I opt for a fruit fly (or other arthropod) part. It looks like a fly tounge to me. Did you find this object regularly, or was it an isolated finding? 

Keep the pics coming.
John


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

Thanks John, good to have DVM here looking at the pics.

I admit these pictures aren't the best, probably because the magnification is so huge...My sample wasn’t the best either. Btw, the magnification is not 60x..I used the 60x objective lens, but there was also a 10x ocular/lens (or even larger) b/w the camera, so that would make the magnification at least 600X

From what I remember at 600x I could easily view the coccidia oocysts and coccidia itself would be hard to miss as it would be quite large...

I used to do fecal floats by the hundreds when I was working for a vet. I didn't mind it as I found it fun looking through a microscope at sh$t with stuff that was moving...who knew that it could have come in useful later in life in this frog hobby.

I didn't see any coccidia in my bastis. I will take some more samples to work today of my other frogs and I will post some pics, hopefully later on today. It would be great to compile a photo gallery of the most common things found in frog sh!t. I know we have some knowledgeable ppl with different backgrounds here on the board. 

It's been years since I have done fecals at the vet, and those were done on cats and dogs. I do fecals for all my frogs every now and then, so by no means am I an expert. I’ll be first to admit that I see stuff in fecals that I have no idea what I’m looking at and hope that those aren’t some precursors of Dart Frog ebola or something.

I’m pretty good at spotting things that seem out of the ordinary. Feel free to chime in and correct me at any time though. I'll take no offence. I’d love to learn more about this stuff. If we all put our heads together, we can probably come up with a basic list of what is commonly found in a dart frog’s fecal sample. Routinely I see weird moving things that I wonder about and dismiss for the lack of knowledge.

Marty




vet_boy77 said:


> Great pics! I definitely think we should have more microscope pictures.
> 
> Regarding pic 1, IMHO, the outlines could be a lot of things including normal protozoals and/or ciliates, or fecal debris. It does not immediately strike me as a coccidian, however, since I cannot discern the size, depth, focus, presence of spores, etc. from this picture, I will have to remain undecided. Are there many of these shapes around? In a microscope context, is this thing large or small? Was it moving when you found it?
> 
> ...


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## Jace King (May 5, 2004)

I just aquired a microscope from my mom's hospital. I want to run fecals on all my frogs, but i have absolutely no idea how. I would probably not want to ship fecals and pay all that money. Anybody have any pointers for someone with Zero experience, that would be great.


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

*New Pics*

I have 3 more pics. The first I'm pretty sure it's coccidia. I didn't find a lot of them...I did 4 samples and only found maybe 10 in total that I'm pretty positive looked like coccidia. I'm not really happy about it and will have to treat them with something. What would you suggest? Would metronidazole work on coccidia?

PIC #1 @ 320X Magnification

The other one I'm not sure what they are, but I only found a little group of them. The one in the middle might be another coccidia, but I couldn't say. These looked like perfect spheres and were spinning all the time. On some I could see 2 flagella(s).

PIC #2 @320X

This is a close up of another flagellate. This was at the limit of the microscope. 
PIC #3 @ 960X












vet_boy77 said:


> Great pics! I definitely think we should have more microscope pictures.
> 
> Regarding pic 1, IMHO, the outlines could be a lot of things including normal protozoals and/or ciliates, or fecal debris. It does not immediately strike me as a coccidian, however, since I cannot discern the size, depth, focus, presence of spores, etc. from this picture, I will have to remain undecided. Are there many of these shapes around? In a microscope context, is this thing large or small? Was it moving when you found it?
> 
> ...


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

I used to do it the proper way before, with super saturated solutions smash/stir the crap and wait until all the stuff floats to the top. I didn't really see any more then when I took a piece of crap added few drops of distilled or RO water smashed it and used a drop of the brown water to do the fecal. There is much more debris doing it my way, but that's OK. I don't mind looking at the hairy fly remains.



Jace King said:


> I just aquired a microscope from my mom's hospital. I want to run fecals on all my frogs, but i have absolutely no idea how. I would probably not want to ship fecals and pay all that money. Anybody have any pointers for someone with Zero experience, that would be great.


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## Darks!de (Nov 16, 2004)

So you just take a stool sample from a frog, mix it with a few drops of RO water and put it in a slide? That's it?

Luke


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## Marty (Feb 27, 2004)

That's my extremely oversimplified method  Seems that the long method of mushing up a 'chunk' in super saturated solution and doing a float method is suitable for goats, etc. In a fecal done for a pumilio, you're dealing with a spec of crap. Makes things a bit harder to do a proper float, so I just dissolve it in a vial with a tiny bit of water, wait for the solids to settle and extract some of the juices with a pipette. Might not be by the book, but you still do get a ton of stuff under the microscope.



Darks!de said:


> So you just take a stool sample from a frog, mix it with a few drops of RO water and put it in a slide? That's it?
> 
> Luke


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## Blort (Feb 5, 2005)

> I’ll be first to admit that I see stuff in fecals that I have no idea what I’m looking at and hope that those aren’t *some precursors of Dart Frog ebola or something.*


lol "Dart Frog ebola", let's hope not.

Sorry to hear about the coccidia. I poked around after reading your post about identifying coccidia to see if certain dyes would bring them out more. I didn't find much of interest, but there was some mention of using flourecense (sp?) microscopes to detect if the coccidia oocytes were alive or not. The implication seemed to be that they would only treat the animals if the parasite wasn't being killed by the animals immune system although I couldn't quite figure it out.

The pictures are very interesting as is the azureus video.


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## vet_boy77 (Feb 10, 2005)

I have done the quick and dirty wet mount method with saline (or water). It is much harder to find the important stuff though, but when all you have is a speck of poop, you have to work with what you have. Doing wet mounts will often reveal a large number of protozoals and ciliates, most of which are normal in amphibians (not the case in mammals), and of course endless insect parts. 

I do prefer floats using saturated solution. Often I'll collect several stools from several frogs (such as frogs that share the same enclosure) over a period of a few hours. Then stir them up in the float solution together. 

Marty, thanks for the welcome. I will admit that I do mostly dogs and cats and while I hope to get proficient at frogs, I can still learn a lot from you experience froggers. Regarding fecals in general, I think a photo gallery would be a great idea. The only hitch is to make sure they are reviewed by some experts (preferably more than one) so that the information that is posted is, indeed, correct. 
John


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