"sandra" wrote in message ...
Im looking into buying a microscope for parasite ID among other things. Do
any of you have opinions on a good brand that will allow for 100-400
magnifications. I've seen some online for under $100 that magnify to
10x-40x. I haven't been able to figure out if that means 100-400? I have a
jewelry loupe that I use for examination of some of the more obvious pests
but some of my fish kept off site from my pond have a condition that I need
to investigate further with a microscope.

There are, for all intents and purposes two kinds of microscopes that
have good quality. There are the scopes that are designed to look at
opaque objects such as insects, minerals, etc, that have powers up to
2-300, and those that are designed to look at microscope slides and
have powers up to about 1000. You simply cannot get either one with
adequate optics for this task for $100.

For the opaque you might try Ebay for Wild/Herbrugge, an excellent
brand, for the slide type you might try Leitz, or AO, again on Ebay.
All the rest are toys, and can not really be relied on for real
diagnostic work.