Pregnant Platy Nto Giving Birth (Pictures Included)

OldMan47 said:

Welcome to our forum SharkBait.
The pictures that you have posted are of a well fed platy, not necessarily a pregnant platy. Please have a read through of the thread that I link to in my signature called a My Molly's progress. Although platies and mollies are a bit different in their presentation of progress, they are similar enough to have one be useful in explaining the other.

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OldMan47 said:

Any livebearer female that has been in the company of a male is almost certain to be expecting a drop soon. Livebearers are not known to be especially selective when it comes to their mates. Our task is to evaluate the female's present state of readiness for her next drop. In goodeids that is easy because a female can only carry enough sperm for her next drop. That means that we can almost always use her last exposure to a male as the date to measure her from. For the typical poeciliids such as mollies, swordtails, guppies and platies, we have no such simple relationship. Each of these fish can carry fry from sperm packets as much as 6 months old. That means instead that we need to look at the reproductive history of the females. If a female has dropped fry in the last couple of weeks, she may just be starting her next fry development or may be well along in developing her next fry drop. That is one thing that makes predicting the next fry drop a bit diffi
cult.
I breed mostly goodeids so my case is simpler than many would be. My own breeders are likely to drop fry about 8 weeks after their last contact with the opposite sex and they never can carry over sperm from previous matings. That is not at all true of the more common livebearers.

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OldMan47 said:

Hi there SharkBait.
When I look at the pictures you have provided of your red wag female platy, I find that I would expect her to drop fry in about a week or maybe a bit less. I see that you have another color name for her but that does not influence when she will drop her fry. That platy is not yet what I would call squared off but is indeed very large compared to many other platies. The squared off condition is best illustrated with pictures. I have a link to pictures of one of my mollies through her entire cycle from one drop to the next in my signature area called My molly's Progress. It may help you understand what I mean by squared off when I refer to it.

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