Here is a picture of what I used in my DIY:
They go for roughly 3USD per meter here. They come with double adhesives on the other side so I just stuck them to a long tube and now I have a brighter tank. They are also SMT (surface mounted so very low profile) The top one is multi-colored LED and goes from red to blue, programmable too. I use it for my blue/moonlight. The bottom one is kinda high output fixed white LED. What I like about them is they can penetrate up to the bottom of my tanks and is less uni-directional from how a T5 appears. Oh, I quoted you coz that is just too expensive even for kits. The only difference is I have an electronics background and is self-taught in many DIY's.
