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what do platies do and go through before they give birth? i'm thinkin mines gonna pop soon so i wanna know some signs

This is hard to explain. They fat, and have a light black line running along from under their bellys up to under their chins. They lay sometimes around by themselves. But looking out for when is hard, cause they can be pregnant for quite sometime. Live-bearers also can store sperm, so they can give birth months after they had mated.

Breeding.

As the male matures the Anal fin develops into a structure for reproduction called the Gonopodium. The Gonopodium can be moved in almost any direction and stores the sperm in packs called spermatophores. Once the sperm is inserted into the female it fertilizers her eggs and the rest is stored in the Oviduct walls for later use. The eggs are very rich in yolk and the young develop by consuming their yolk stores. In light colored females pregnancy can be recognized by the growing dark body marking in front of the Anal fin.
Young Live-bearers are fairly large at birth and their development is very advanced. They can swim right away, which is needed to avoid their enemies including their parents who give no natal care whatsoever. The fry grow very rapidly and will eagerly accept fine flake food.

I have a platy that I'm not sure if it's pregnant or sick. It seems fine except that it hides a lot and is fat.

The easiest way to tell if any livebearing fish (platies, mollies, swordtails, or guppies) is pregnant is to check for a "gravid spot". This looks like a dark crescent or quarter-circle shaped marking at the rear of the abdomen (this might be difficult to see on black fish). Any pregnant livebearer should be active behave normally. Swelling and a tendency to hide could be signs of a problem


http://species.fishindex.com/species_3212xiphophorus_maculatus_platy.html

[span class="edited"][Edited by TigerAngel 2004-07-11 03:29][/span]

... but with platties and mollies, it is difficult if not impossible to see a gravid spot because of their colouring. I have one platy who is a light orange and I can see a gravid spot on her but the other two ladies are red wags so there is no way of seeing a gravid spot.

One way to tell is by her size. If she looks like she is wddling when she swims, like she is "ready to pop" and squarish when viewed from behind or above, then she is close to giving birth. My light-coloured platy becomes extremely secretive (I sometimes hardly see her at all until after the birth). The other two are not secretive but do tend to hover in one area near the end of the pregnancy.

A sure sign with my girls of imminent birth is that they race up and down the side of the tank. My daughter will look at them and say "stop, you're going to get dizzy - you're making me dizzy" - that's how fast they go It's always right after they start doing this my girls give birth.

Edited to add: For some reason, most births occur in the early morning hours after lights out.

[span class="edited"][Edited by Meg's Mom 2004-07-11 05:35][/span]