My New Metallic Perisphaerus!!!

Jonah Shipment Pt. 1/3

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I recently got a package from fellow invert hobbyist Jonah, who sent me some amazing new roach species! 😁 

Let's start off this series of posts with the acquisition I'm most pumped for, Perisphaerus sp. "Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia". This beautiful species is a metallic copper green color in person, though it's proven hard to accurately capture their coloration on my camera. Under dim lighting or flash photography, they just look dark copper, almost black. But under sunlight I was able to capture some decent shots showing off their accurate coloration.

I received three adult females, three large female nymphs, and two tiny unsexed nymphs, all of which are WC. Since they were WC, I highly suspected the adult females would be mated and gravid, and this turned out to be true, as one of them gave birth to a litter of a dozen or so nymphs a couple days after arrival. 🥰 So my culture is already on it's way to being established!

I have them set up in a small, well ventilated enclosure with a thin layer of coconut fiber as the substrate, and vertical bark pieces for hides. They've got fresh fruits, dog food, and artificial pollen for food, I'm keeping them humid and warm (75-85F°). Hopefully I'll be able to keep the culture growing well and can distribute them in the US hobby, would be nice to have THREE distinct roly poly roaches in the hobby, after only having P.pygmaeus available for so many years! 😅 (speaking of which, this species is about twice as large as pygmaeus).

Here are some pictures of this awesome new species to Blatticulture:

Adult female under flash photography

Adult female under sunlight

Adult female with newborns

This is my new favorite species in my collection, and this genus is one of my favorites! Hope to get more new Perisphaerus species in the future, and I hope all the species I have so far thrive for me, (my P.pygmaeus are long overdue for a birth, which has me a bit concerned, but I think I've just been keeping them too humid over the Summer). 😅

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all soon! 😉