The lighting forum on nano-reef.com has some great DIY LED projects running. I would say everything you need to know is in that forum or the people there can answer for you if you take the time to search first.

Sorry if I sounded overly critical. That wasn't the intent. Just trying to help you avoid wasted money and grief over dead coral. The problem with standard leds is they just don't generate intense enough light to penetrate more than a few inches into water with sufficient par to keep photosynthetic organisms alive. It may look bright to your eye but it won't have enough energy to keep things alive. It won't work, even for zoas or mushrooms etc. You need the high power leds to get light that is intense enough to penetrate down into the tank.

Lighting a 10 gallon with leds will be even more expensive and you are probably looking at something in the USD $250 to $300 range at the minimum for parts to make it work. I would recommend a T5HO fixture for the 10 gallon. I have one on mine from fishneedit.com. It is a 24" 4 bulb 96 watt fixture but it fits on a 10 gallon. It just hangs over the ends of the tank a bit on each end. You should be able to get it, shipping included, for about USD $111. It's a good fixture for the money. The bulbs aren't the best but will work for zoas and softies and you can upgrade to better bulbs in 8 to 12 months when it's time for a bulb change. LEDs have a lot of potential but to do it right at this time is expensive.

it wasn't critical ron :)

i see where you're coming from. I think that im going to look at prices for LED stuffs, and if it ends up being too much, t5 it is

EDIT: holy crap, T5 it is. lookin like LED is gonna be WAY too expensive

Hmm okay, a couple things.

I'll be ordering the LEDs premounted on star boards from www.ledsupply.com... a US company but the only place I've seen that sells this sort of thing online. They actually sell everything I'll need but some of the stuff I'll be using will come from Canada (heatsink, fan, power supply).

I'm planning on growing SPS in 8" of water... my planned array (there will be 3 of them) is 1 - Cree MC-E chip (6.5K) with 4 Cree XR-E Royal Blue chips (~460 nm)... I'll end up with about a 14 - 20K look though this will be adjustable. And the PAR should be more than sufficient for SPS since the water is only 8" deep and the lights will be 1/2" or so from the water surface.

I should note that there will definitely be some spotlighting within the tank. I've planned for this since the goal is to light 'islands' of rock rather than evenly light the whole sandbed, and I think the effect will be cool. This will also leave lower light areas for things like zoas and ricordea, but the focus is keeping (and growing) SPS.

So I guess it all depends on what you want and what you need it to do. For your purposes I would say a 1 - 1 ratio of XR-E cool whites to royal blues would more than do it, and would likely penetrate to the bottom of a 10 gallon without optics (lenses). But it will be expensive if you are planning on lighting the whole tank with this... for localized high intensity light it's fine, but for anything else it's expensive.

The LEDs you have will be fine for general viewing purposes but will likely not produce enough light to grow even zoas unless the zoas are right beneath them in less than a couple inches of water. I would consider using them along with a higher intensity light source... if you're still set on LEDs it can be done modularly. I'll explain more about my idea later, I gotta go to work :lol:

If you buy built LED setup yes FAR to expensive at this time. If your good with a soldering iron you can build a killer LED setup for a comparable price. LED is the future for this hobby no doubt.

How on earth did I miss this thread?!?!

You sound alot like me. When I used to live at home my parents would come downstairs to my "domain" and be all like..."What the ****!!! When did THAT get here?" (Pointing to new, 4x2x2 Ackie tank)
Me: "Oh that, I've had that for a while...dad/mom said I could (depending on who noticed it first)
Them: It has to go
Me: Well it's alot of work to get it out of here...and look how cute this guy is!!!

It still works on the old man...

hehe, thats me Randi.

probably the funniest thing i find is i went from about 1 1/2 years ago telling my mom i ant a goldfish bowl in my room,
now its not 1 but 2 reef aquariums.:lol:

im still pretty set on i wont be able to do the LEDs on a 13 year olds budget, but i'll let you guys know if i find something.

Oh, and also some fish stocking ideas ive been thinking bout are:

-1 P.fridmani
or
-3-5 either trimma or eviota gobies
or
some sort of goby

i kinda want to do some kind of kool active fish for this tank,
and maybe something that not alot of people have.
thats kinda why im looking at the lil school of pygmy gobies.

if anyone has any suggestions about a really cool fish, speak up!

+1 for the Trimma gobies. Watching them interact with one another would be neat

+1 P. fridmani

hehe, you sure do love your fridmani, dont you Snaz?