My gulper is acting weird, and looks awful.

[Kryo]

Got this gulper for about a week now, beem fine up until today. never fed him feeders or anything live. So yesterday, fed my gulper a tiny frozen shrimp after watching him do laps and swim against the filter current. Looked perfectly fine, and energetic. Off to bed i went.

Next day went to work and came home to him swimming very slow, and vertically at times, like he cant control himself well. And I think with some very hard to see white bumps on his stomach it seems like, and some pretty big pieces of shrimp in the tank. They looked half digested? I can not say if it was pooped out or thrown up as i wasn’t home to witness it. And his slime coat seemed like it is coming off? Does this look like ich to you avid catfish owners? Or is he just stressed for other reasons? Water parameters are all good except the PH being a little high at 8.2, as i am slowly lowering it after getting the fish.

 

[Fallen_Leaves16]

Doesn't look like ich; possibly the beginning stages of a bacterial infection or a parasite problem. What are the specific water parameters? Has the tank been cycled? Did you feed the gulper cat anything other than shrimp?

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I wonder if the meal and what happened after is a coincidence or not.

The fish regurgitated the shrimp. The shrimp, especially for human consumption can be treated with formaldehyde as a color preservative. Not too dangerous for big humans but toxic to small fish. That's one red flag.

The other red flag, to me, is the playing with the pH. It is wrought with problems with unstable pH, human operator error, etc. I'd never recommend to anyone to artificially maintain the pH.