Albino Catfish dying--please help

[JustJack]

I've posted this twice now in different places before finding the catfish section so I apologize for that.

I'm new to this site new to fish keeping. We bought this house a year ago and it had 2 koi ponds in the back yard. They are connected and the water from the upper pond flows into the lower pond. The lower pond has koi and goldfish in it and the upper pond has an albino catfish that's about 3 feet long. Yesterday the catfish was fine and swimming his laps as usual, but when I went to feed the koi today, the catfish looked like he was dying. The temps got down to freezing last night, but he was fine last winter. He looks very bloated and his eyes are glassy and it looks like he's gasping for breath. I don't understand what could have happened overnight since he seemed fine yesterday. Can anybody help? I know nothing about fish but I don't want to lose "Big Boy" and I don't know what to do for him.

I believe he is a channel fish, but I don't know for sure. I think he's about 5-7 years old. After first posting my question on a different site, I went to the pet store and had my water tested and they gave me some medication that contains melaleuca (for the glassy eyes) and they said it wouldn't hurt the koi. I hope I didn't do the wrong thing.

 

[Industrial]

Any guesses on the length width and height of the pond?

 

[warmouth]

Pics would help any identification and diagnosis.

 

[mqktandy]

Need pics and your water perams. Be careful with meds though some can be bad for catfish. Luckily channels are about indistructable

 

[JustJack]

We really have no idea, but the neighbor who helped dig the ponds said it's at least 4 feet deep. It's hard to get a good picture with all the vegetation, but the ponds curve around a deck that takes up a whole corner of the back yard.

I'm not sure how to post photos, but here goes...This was Friday late afternoon and he looked just fine as he swam up to see what I was doing:

This is what he looked like yesterday and today (he is still alive, but the poor thing looks miserable):

This is the best pic I could get of his pond:

 

[Tom Pecanic]

Oh man... That sucks!! I caught a wc amel cat in the Colorado River years ago; whatta sight when it surfaced off of cut up mackerel... It humbles me to see him like that.. Keep placing ads for help; get these guys the info they need to help and maybe yank him indoors??

 

[JustJack]

We don't have any place to put him indoors, but it won't be cold anymore tonight. He was fine last winter, though and it was colder than this. It was just so sudden it seems like there has to be something I can do. My husband called the neighbor that dug the pond and he came and helped us take down the deck's roof and I cut back the plants to get more sun on the ponds yesterday but he still looks the same.

 

[haynchinook334]

Might want to look into "deflating swim/air bladder". I have done it once to a frontosa I had.

 

[Cichla dude]

Oh That poor thing... that Albino Channel Cat is almost fully grown. I think he might have air bladder.

 

[JustJack]

I found one local expert that still had a working phone number and he was very helpful. He said it definitely sounded like swim bladder and he stayed on the phone with me for about 30 minutes trying to rule things out. I had already used the medication for a possible bacterial infection and it hadn't seemed to make a difference so he thinks it was caused by stress due to the drastic temperature change (a 60 degree drop in one day) and the fact that the pond uses well water. I tested the water myself and the Ph is low, but everything else was fine. He said if it is caused by stress, there's really nothing I can do except hope that he pulls through. Temps are back up again and we took the roof down so there's more sun up there so keep your fingers crossed that he can stay alive until I get things right again.

I think I might have to pay the guy to come out here and look at the pond setup and tell us what to do to fix it. The guy that owned this house before set up the pump and stuff himself and he really wasn't all there. Something is leaking and I've had to add water to it and I didn't realize until today that it happened at the same time, so I think it has to be stress. I really hope he makes it. Is it odd to get so attached to a fish?