I would go with mainly blues and whites, and not so many reds (these promote algae growth from what I've been told). Maybe an RGB emitter or two.
I used 10w emitters and am happy with those (and so are the corals).
And yeah, $40 won't get you much except the emitters. The heatsink, power source, dimmers, etc. add up. Even the cheap eBay power supply is $22, a heatsink is probably going to run you about $26 with shipping (not even 30" long but something that could handle say 12 x 3w emitters) and when you're buying just small quantities of different coloured LEDs, that will be more expensive per emitter than if you bought bulk. A dimmable power supply will cost even more.
So realistically, your budget won't come close to getting you what you want. You could build your own Aluminum heatsinks to save some money and find used parts, but even doing that will not guarantee coming close to the $40 budget.
Personally, if you're going LED, I would replace your entire lighting with LED and maybe just keep the T5 for supplemental instead of the other way around.
I'm admittedly biased though because I'm switching over to LED over my tanks, my home & even my tv. The energy savings is huge. Went from 3x150w mh & 4x96w PC actinic to 280w (max - but usually only about 200w) of mixed LED over my main 165g mixed reef.
Switching my 150w MH over my 2' 60g "nemo/anemone" cube tank to 50w of LED.
Anthony
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