Firewood catfish swim bladder issue?

[BigPapaTru]

I have a roughly 14” planiceps catfish who seems to have developed a swim bladder issue of some sort. His belly is distended as if he ate a full meal despite not having shown any interest in food over the last few weeks. It seems like he is too bouyant to stay down, because he just floats to the surface every time he tries to swim down to the bottom. It almost seems as if he has an air bubble trapped in his stomach or something like that. I added some epsom salts to the tank yesterday but so far seems to have had no effect. Has anyone else experienced anything like this with a catfish before?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

We've seen our share of problems like this here.

It doesn't look like it is a swimming bladder issue, or at least not alone because the eyes of the catfish are badly bulging as does the gullar area under the lower jaw.

I'd think this fish is badly swollen with water retention. No redness yet, so maybe this points away from an internal bacterial infection. Could be parasitic. Or could be much simpler and related to water chemistry and composition. It still could be a bloat too. Such symptoms are rather non-descript, but bloat wouldn't cause a pop-eye unless through a secondary infection / infestation.