The Golden Pseudoglomeris!!!

The latest in a long line of new additions to the Invertebrate Dude collection, the beautiful Pseudoglomeris cf. magnifica "Gold - China"!!! 😁 This particular culture has an interesting history, they were received by a US customer of the Chinese vendor MyHomeNature by accident, MHN made a mistake and sent these instead of the plants the customer had ordered... She then passed them on to one of our mutual friends, Leo Blattodea, as they weren't doing so well for her. Unfortunately, they were very up and down for Leo, and so he sent the remainder to me, in the hopes I can establish a colony successfully and then send them both back some nymphs. Here's hoping I won't let them down, I have researched this species' care extensively, so I'm confident I can succeed! 🙂

The first time this species entered the US hobby was when Brandon Maines got them back in 2018, (not from MyHomeNature, though Brandon's and mine were very likely caught by the same collector, from the same locale), and Brandon, already having regular P.magnifica (the green Vietnam stock), noticed there were some differences between these "Golds" and them... 

The most obvious but superficial difference between them is coloration, but that's not so important. What is important is the fact that the Chinese "Golds" are consistently quite smaller than the Vietnam greens when mature, the behavior between the two is a bit different, the "Gold" males don't seem to live as long as the green males do, and as Brandon has just learned, it seems the "Golds" like higher humidity than the green Vietnam stock.

To complicate matters, the green Vietnam stocks can sometimes throw out similarly golden colored individuals, though the larger adult size and everything else is the same as their green siblings, and no one's ever isolated said individuals from the Vietnam stock and tried selectively breeding for that coloration as far as I'm aware. Right now, any strains labeled as "Gold" in the hobby come from China, not Vietnam.

It's possible these Chinese "Golds"may be an undescribed subspecies of P.magnifica, for now it seems that calling them Pseudoglomeris cf. magnifica, not just P.magnifica straight out, is for the best, until we get a taxonomist to take a look at them at least. 

I've got several adult females and about 7 small CB nymphs. Unfortunately, all the adults are WC, and only some of them were adults and mated when collected, the rest matured in captivity, isolated from adult males, and thus won't produce babies for me... And it's possible the mated females may be too old by now to give birth again, so it'll be quite hit or miss, my main hope is that the small CB nymphs will NOT be a unisex group, and I can then breed those when they mature in a year or so. 🤞 

I have them all set up in a very well ventilated container with a substrate of coconut fiber, with vertically slanted bark for hides. I'm keeping two thirds of the enclosure humid, and will keep them at 75-85F°. I'm feeding them chick feed, artificial pollen, and fruits. 

Here are some pictures of adult females:

I'll be honest, these aren't quite as stunning as the green magnifica IMO, and kinda look brownish in dim lighting... BUT, under bright light they are really quite attractive, and look like living chunks of metal, which is very very cool! 😁 I'm looking forward to hopefully breeding these beauties and getting some back into the hands of their previous owners, and helping to get them established in US Blatticulture overall! 

Well, that's gonna do it for today, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all in the next post! 😉