If you’ve been looking for reasons to be inspired with your reef aquarium this summer, how about 27 of them? 27 of Cree’s top of the line, high powered XP series LEDs all hanging out in one of the most feature packed LED lights available for the reef aquarium. Of course we’re talking about the Io LED pendant from Pacific Sun and we want to give one of these away to a lucky reef builders reader. Normally we give away most of our prizes for barely lifting a finger but for this $1000 top gear reef aquarium product we’ll be asking that you actually have to press a finger; on the shutter button that is.
The Io LED pendant is among one of the most valuable products we’ve ever given away so this giveaway we’re gonna make you work for it. We’ve been using the 75 watt Io pendant over a three foot reef for a couple weeks now and the color of the corals is really starting to pop. We love being able to wirelessly tweak the setting of the Io and the graphical windows program makes it easy to reproduce some really cool dawn to dusk patterns. The cost of high performance LED lights is still prohibitive for some reef aquarists but we are extremely pleased to have this opportunity to hook up one lucky reefer with this high performance, next generation LED reef light. Huge thanks to Pacific Sun for proposing this contest and their Io LED pendant is currently available from Pacific Sun USA for an intro price of $899. For more information about the wireless and controllable Pacific Sun Io LED pendant, see our previous coverage and continue reading to see how you can enter to win this fine reef light.
Photo contests of reef aquarium life tend to be dominated by those reefers who take a ton of pictures, or have top end photo equipment, or both. To level the playing field a little bit, this competition is as much a husbandry contest as it is a photo contest. We are more interested in seeing the details of your fish or coral subject that convey that it is is in the prime of health than we are at seeing how many pictures you can focus-stack or how proficient you’ve become with the HDR features of creative suite. The type of specimens we are looking for would be along the lines of a super jumbo emperor angel with tons of lateral stripes, super male wrasses that are showing a ton of striking markings in their fins but if you have the most perfectly round, vibrantly yellow tang that is fair game too. As for the corals, we’re looking for big stands of polyps, exquisitely branching staghorns or perfectly plating montiporas or chalices. Whatever it is that is just absolutely gleaming in your reef tank, the specimens that your friends always comment about, that is what we want to see. Of course a great photograph will help us in determining the quality of your specimen so please try to strike a balance between the quality of your subject and the quality of your photo.
The specimen of the submitted photo must be in your care, the photograph must be taken by you and we’ll be accepting photo submissions for the next two weeks. The first round of images will be judged by the Reef Builders staff who will narrow down the candidates to fewer than ten. The finalists will then be posted on Reef Builders, and voted on by you, the Reef Builders readers. If you still have questions after thoroughly reading the guidelines above and the full contest rules below, then feel free to post them in the comments.
- You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you decide to enter this contest more then once you will be disqualified. Yeah, we have robots and human slaves that check for fairness.
- You must submit only one picture, in digital format, and send it to contest at reefbuilders dot com. By Submitting your photograph in this contest you give us some rights to repost the image once in a while.
- Contest is open to anyone in North America, 18+. Yeah, turns out that in some states its illegal to win a contest if your under 18. Who knew? Ask your parents if you want to be entered.
- The finalist will be chosen by reef builders staff and the winner will be voted on by an online poll. The first place winner will receive a Pacific Sun Io LED pendant, valued at $999 and the second and third place winners will receive a voucher for a 15% discount on the purchase of a single Pacifc Sun LED light.
- If you are chosen as the winner, you need to respond to our email within 3 days. If you don’t, we will pick someone else. So check your email!
- Entries can be submitted until Saturday, July 31st, 11:59PM CST. Good luck!
