Will this LED lighting work?

I have one of those hoods for the 10 gallon tank that have screw-in incandescent bulbs in it. I managed to find some 6500k flourescent bulbs that fit in it. The question I have is, can I use those bulbs with 460nm LED lighting to get corals to grow in my tank? I am pretty sure I can make a LED light for about $10. 460nm is the standard wavelength for the blue LEDs.

What's the wattage of the screw in bulbs? It might be enough to support some low light corals but the color and growth won't be great. The blue light is more for looks than anything, doesn't do much for growth. Depends on the strength and quality of leds as well. Nano-reef.com has a lot of good info on building leds if you are handy like that.

I just built the LED lights. I bought 5 of the brightest ones that Radio Shack sells They look great when the white lights are off, but you can hardly see them when the lights are on. They will be good night lighting though. I plan to make another, as the one I built covers about half of the tank.
 If the blue LEDs are just for appearance then, how to they sell "anctinic"\LED lighting? The 6500k bulbs make a total of 30w of florescent lighting.

If you paid $10.00 for the LEDs, then no. You can't use it to grow corals. It may help them look better because they are actinic, but there will be literally no benefit to your corals from them. The LEDs that companies like Solaris put in theirs cost about $4.00 each from the manufacturer, plus a couple extra for the lens. and that's before they mark it up, and the retail store you buy it from marks it up. Hence the reason the 12" Solaris cost over $1000. One guy in the cities built an LED fixture for a nano, and he paid over $500.00 for all the parts.

You can probably get away with mushrooms, or some very low light LPS, like Montestrea

I paid $15 for the setup, but I used some of my own parts, and it is only about 1/4 of the planned project. I plan to do about 20 LEDs.

The LEDs that you need to use are ones that are rated to 3 watts a piece. The Shack does not sell anything even close to that.

Here is the thread of a guy in the cities that built a good coral supporting LED lighting for a small aquarium. He used the same LEDs and lenses as the big bad LED fixtures that are commercially available. Anything less, for the purpose of photosynthesis,is a waste of money. If you are just looking for actinic supplement, by all means, do it. You will probably love it. I have a friend that had strips of blue, yellow, and red LEDs, and they alternated and faded, it really gave some cool tones to the tanks. His Dendros looked awesome under the red.

http://www.tcmas.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14906&highlight=led+lighting

"Actinic" refers strictly to the color of light, and has nothing to do with intensity.

i just read that whole thread, it is still very expensive and unless you have a ton of time it is still just better to buy one a company made with a warranty so you dont have 500 dollars in parts.

OK well at least it looks cool at night (moon lighting). And maybe there will be a very small benefit to it.

I hope not. Corals perform photosynthesis during the day, and build skeletal structures at night. Dark times are just as important as day times. Don't keep the moonlights on all the time, i.e. turn them off when you go to bed.

What's the point of moonlights if you shut them off at night? Mine stay on 24/7 and have for years over every tank I've had.

none, I guess. I wouldn't keep them on all night, but that's personal preference. electricity would be the only thing, but with a few leds, it's minimal.

Does the moon in "real life" cause spawn in coral? I thought that is what i heard on discovery or something like that. I have always wondered what the standard in the aquarium had to say about lunar light, seems most people do not take it that serious. I personally dont have lunars at all and hope someday to have something just need to much other stuff for my tank and that falls at the bottom of the list. so in other words mine is blacked out for 12 hours a day minus natural light from the room. Kinda boring for me sometimes when i just want to look at it.

I got my moonlights and they come on at 9pm and are on till 9am it is kind of cool to look in the tank at night and see all the pods and things swimming around, also can see all of the feeder tenicals on all the differant coral.