seahorse was eating for a month and now stopped?

[bizkd]

hi i bought my seahorse about a month ago and he was eating the frozen shrimp i got him and would swim around the tank constantly but the past 4 days he won't eat when i feed everyone in the tank. i have another sea horse and he is fine but this one doesn't move anymore that much and also his eyes dont really move as much as they used to. i read about the freshwater dipping but i called my pet store and they said i shouldn't since they're fragile. so do you guys have any ideas of whats wrong?

 

[rayjay]

I've dipped a lot of seahorses, most successfully, some not.
A freshwater dip will tell you if there are parasites or not as the seahorse will thrash around for a while and sometimes you can see the residue of the parasite in the water after the seahorse is removed.
For freshwater dipping a seahorse, match the temperature and the pH of the tank water, placing the seahorse in the water for 12 minutes. ONLY remove the seahorse sooner if it becomes unresponsive when you touch it.
Have you tried live food yet?
It is much better if you transfer the seahorse to a hospital tank so it can be viewed closely and see if it eats when you don't look but placing a numbered amound of mysis in the tank and checking the numbers later in the day.
Get the temperature down to 68° or as close as possible to lessen the chances of bacterial outbreaks.
By the way, there is hardly any LFS's out there that know anything significant about seahorses except how to make money selling them, and some do poor at that.

 

[bizkd]

so what kind of water would i use? just like bottled water? and i dont have a pH tester so what should i do about that? i can get the temp the same though.

and i haven't tried any other kind of food yet

 

[rayjay]

If your water supply doesn't use cloramine, you can use aged tap water after chlorine dissipates.
I wouldn't use RO/DI as DI has no electrolytes and you can't measure pH properly. Buy a pH test kit.