fecal floats
Well with a little research, I seem to have answered my own question. It looks like with practice and the proper solution, one could perform their own fecal float/smear. It would just be a matter of confidently identifying the parasites.
BINGO, you hit the nail right on the head. the materials are simple, but you can have all of the materials and still be miles away from being able to interprete your results, without some fairly in depth study of reptile parasitology, they wont do you any good. the exception would be, if you have photographic capabilities with your setup then you could always forward photographic results to a vet or forum member, dave weldon was very gracious and helpful with me when i had some suspicious results.
as an analogy, i like to liken it to learning how to play the guitar. you can have a nice guitar or even several, and a book on how to play them, but that still doesnt make someone a guitar player. it takes practice and study, without it you will get nowhere.
fecal floats are easy to perform and view, but interpreting them takes practice and study in parasitical pathology.
why cant you just compare the results against some kind of chart?, you can, and thats a good starting point for anyone looking to get started, but the interpretation will be far from conclusive without the knowledge needed.
even with a chart to compare to, you have to understand, that there is ALL kinds of stuff floating around in your sample, even after it has been applied to a slide. many parasites look similar in egg form, to complicate matters even further many of those resemble air bubbles that may look quite similar to your target. further, depending on the type of equipment and ones skill in using it. any given object, can look entirely different form one level of focus to the next. to complicate things even more, there is an effect called "brownian motion", essentially even though there is less than a drop of water on your slide, at the microscopic level, it is literally an ocean. you can easily spend an hr, just transversing a single drop of water, to make sure you cover it all. even though once placed under the coverslide, remember at microscopic level, its still an ocean, complete with currents, heat from the stage or other factors will cause the solution to flow freely at the microscopic level, with it will move most of the things suspended in it, giving completely dead and inanimate objects the appearance of swimming. and being alive, when in fact they are not . (not helpful)
as far as materials, you will need;
a microscope suitable for the purpose, preferably with adjustable stage lighting and a mechanically operated stage with x-y movement and preferably fine and coarse tune , and a magnification of around 200-1000x, for anyone interested there have already been several threads on all of these scopes but anyone is free to pm if they have any specific questions.
examples of lower priced scopes that are well up to the task would be a celestron 44340 or an amscope t400 or t490 (both can be seen on ebay, but if you already have access, most scopes with the above features are suitable for the purpose
also, you also need a rock solid table /platform to do it on, as the slightest jiggling will render most efforts useless.
the float supplies themselves are simple, you will need;
the fecal float solution itself , goes by many tradenames, the most common of which is "FECASOL" usually about $15-40 a gal plus shipping
several fecalizers (the little 2 pc plastic gismo you actually put and float the sample in) $20-25 is a common price for about 50 units if i remember correctly.
a box of slides, $10 and a box of coverslides, also<$10
another thing that would come in immensely handy, would be an etched measuring slide, essentially a microscopic ruler for measuring items in the field of view.
and of course you will need several notes to compare your results to so you will need at least a quick reference chart and a good book on reptile parasitology. ill post some links if i make it back to this thread.
dont get me wrong, im not trying to discourage anyone from doing their own fecal float/smear analysis, i think its something that every serious long term cham keeper should eventually get into. preferably before suspicions arise, because it will take many hrs of serious study and and many attempts before one is likely to be able to interprete the results with any accuracy, but with a fair amount of practice and study, its possible to be relatively proficient at it in a reasonably short time.
many recommend fecals every year, and many post who need fecals but dont want to spend the cash
if you have 5 chams at an average fecal float price of say $50, and many vets wont do fecals until they have had an office visit, that can add up to a substantial expenditure, if one is proficient at doing their own floats they can do one at the slightest sign of trouble or just for the heck of it for just a couple of $ per try, to me its a no brainer, the cost of just 2 fecal floats and 2 office visits is going to be more than the expense of everything you need to do it yourself including microscope (based on celestron 44340 and fecal supplies = total cost of around $250)
for anyone that already has the scope, it doesnt make any sense not to do it. all of the stuff mentioned is readily available on the web and probably locally if you know where to look. but if you just want pics so you can check the materials out ebay is probably the place to go for fecalizer pics and such. jmo
ps edit; you can use small 2-3ml test tubes on a stand instead of fecalizers, but even though fecalizers leave a lot to be desired, they have a filter function (inner basket) that is helpful
its easy enough to make your own fecal solution, there are recipies all over the web, usually involving epsom salts and sugar, but without knowing for sure if it was the desired specific gravity of 1.2, then the solution is worthless. the cost of a lab quality hydrometer is probably about the same as a gallon of fecasol . a gallon of fecalizer will do hundreds of floats so its pointless to make, economically speaking.
also fecal floats require a fair amount of sample, the recommended i think is a gram, but you can get away with far less, but even a 1/3 of a gram is impossible when you are talking about neonate samples, so in that case a smear would be required.
. But you'll learn it if you got someone to teach you and enough time/fecals to learn. I can recommend 
