New Platys......pregnant?!

[OldMan47]

It is a sign that some people use. I have never noticed it being particularly useful.

 

[fluffycabbage]

Does the white ball on their buisness end mean they will give birth soon cause shes had it about a week now and she hasnt had her fry?!

some of my platys had that white ball for weeks before giving birth x

 

[Kerri Gronow]

Ahhhhhh I see, I was just really curious! I am really looking forward to the babies as they will be my first! So what other changes will I notice before she has her fry?! Thanks for the replies!

 

[OldMan47]

Your platy will square off and viewed from the side it will almost look like she has swallowed a die, a rounded corner one like you would find in a Monopoly game. They actually take on much the same shape as the ones in pictures of my molly in my molly full cycle thread called My Molly's Progress in my signature area. Your platy will tend to become more a loner than she is accustomed to being, noticing it depends on you being familiar with her normal behavior. A stranger will be unable to immediately spot the behavior because we won't know what is normal for her. Some of the extreme forms it can take is hiding behind the heater or filter but far less extreme signs also can apply to a normally gregarious female.

 

[Kerri Gronow]

Yes I understand now... My platy is really social around the other fish and is always at the glass when people are looking in the tank. So I think it will be easy enough to spot when she is ready to drop! I will look at your thread now!

Thank you

 

[joegti]

Dunno if you read my thread right above/below this one.

My platy had the white spot for about a week before she dropped. She was also swimming around and acting totally normal until she was busy dropping fry. She seemed to do it in a few phases...drop 20 fry take a break, drop 20 more and take a break etc. There was a little time when she positioned herself almost vertical in the plants while dropping the fry.

 

[Kerri Gronow]

I will look at your thread

Well my platy is still really active, but the male platy which I thought was female has started really chasing her around.

Does this mean she is gonna drop anytime soon and he wants to be next in line to mate?!

I put her in the breeding trap today to get her away from the male and see if her being alone she will maybe have her babies!

Any ideas?!

 

[OldMan47]

There are plenty of non-standard pregnancies as KerriGronow has implied. In my mind that does not invalidate the standard times involved but merely means that the standard times are far from perfect in their predictive ability. What it all means to me is that we really never have all the facts that relate to a common livebearer's pregnancy. On other other hand, we are often quite lucky to know fairly well the next drop date we can expect for our fish. That date must always be taken with a "grain of salt" since all parameters for each individual tank are never known with total accuracy. Things as simple as tank water temperature can easily move the next predicted drop date by several days. We almost always use standard expectations here on TFF while we also tacitly recognize the effect that things like tank temperature will have on the expected drop date.

 

[Kerri Gronow]

Ahhhh... I see. So what you are saying is that every fish is different and you can only go by the average time of pregnancy, also the temperature relates to each drop?! My platy is just taking its time lol!

 

[OldMan47]

Really, you can predict quite accurately the expected drop date of any of the common livebearers if you only allow the male and female to be together for about a day and then separate everybody. Any resulting pregnancies can be predicted with good results if you know the date of conception and the tank's water temperature. On the other hand, if you place a male and a female together in a tank, you will likely not know the real date that conception takes place and anything outside the "typical" temperature will mean that you are off by some amount for that reason too. Each female will follow the standard timing fairly well based strictly on the conception date and the water temperature. What we often do not know is the actual conception date.