Fecal coliform is the bacteria that propagate in the digestive tracts of animals and humans. The water is tested for fecal coliform because although the coliform does not cause disease, it often coexists with pathogenic bacteria, which is capable of causing human diseases. Other than the health threat, coliform adds excess organic material to a waterway, which causes the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water to decrease. The Q-value should not drop below 50%.

Procedures:

1. Obtain a pipet full of water from the river. Approximately 1mL

2. Fill an Agar film with the sample water from the river.

3. Wait until the fecal coliform will form dots on the Agar film. The coliform dots will be blue. Count only the blue dots.

4. Count the amount of dots on the Agar film.

5. The number of dots should be mulitiplied by 100 to obtain the number of colonies per 100mL of water