Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i told my parents that i want to get a microscope. my parents said that's fine, but they dont really know enough to go out and get the right one themselves. now for the best price, ive found that ebay's got it. what im looking for is a compound microscope so i can start checking my animals' feces for evidence of parasites. the library here has a great deal of parasitology books and journals, so im sure i've got some good references to learn from. all i really want is 3 objective lenses at 4x, 10x, and 40x, and i dont necessarily need the oil immersion lens, but i understand that usually comes with most of them. the prices im looking at are around $200 to $250 or so, which is like at least half the price that most microscope websites offer. they also come with warranties which is nice. i noticed most on ebay dont specify a manufacturer, and is that something i should watch out for, or are most of those microscopes basically the same quality? if anyone could offer suggestions, i would appreciate it.

i noticed the same when i was looking last month on ebay. they seem to be of pretty high quality but it is kind of hard to tell sometimes. one thing you may want to try is to see if your university has a surplus store or what they do when they upgrade their equipment.
also, you'll likely need a centrifuge ( if you're not using one at school) which are also quite pricey.

A good point was brought up to look at your university before buying on ebay. University's tend to have high quality scopes, and at a reasonable price. Depending on how in-depth you'd want to get, a centrofuge isn't necassary. At the diagnostic lab that i worked at we would simply put the feces in a "fecalizer" and then "float" that in a sugar soln. "Fecalizer" is a fancy term for a plastic jar that allows one to perform the filtering and coverslipping. They're cheap and sold in bulk, just check a veterinary medical supply site. I've only used a centrifuge for research purposes; take multiple measurements, compare species, relative numbers, etc. Magnification higher than 40X isn't necessary either.