So, here's the bad stuff:
Honestly, I'm too disgusted to even do it on a pic by pic basis, so you can just look at them and notice the idiocy for yourself.
I will say that my idea about using a pond pump to constantly run water through the system will not work with the way I have the system setup - instead of an intake and an outtake hole, I'm just going to have one hole per bucket which will have a "T" fitting, kind of like a sidecar. This should ensure that I can always have the pond pump running and circulating water throughout the system.
Also, my lack of engineering and plumbing and whatever other skills that come into play happened to burn me - I used an 11/16" bit to drill the holes in the bucket, even though the guy's design who I used as a blueprint used a 7/8" bit - I figured if his was good, a smaller, tighter fit was better.
I was wrong.
The size of the hole and the grommet trying to fit into it put unnecessary stress on the plastic and made it so that one or two of the buckets leaked, so I'm going to use a larger drill bit for my newer buckets.
Lesson learned.
I also realized that putting only eight buckets in that tent was not a very efficient use of space, and I think that I could fit 10 buckets in there without much of a problem.
So, heading back to Home Depot tomorrow to get some more buckets, and heading to the hydro store to get some "T" fittings and grommets to make my newest system.
As an aside, does anyone know what paints/primers are the best for light-proofing those buckets? Because that was by far the most labor-intensive part of the process, and if I could do that a little quicker, building this new system won't be much of a problem at all.
Anyways, pics are below of the failure that took me almost two full days - if anyone's got any questions about any of them just let me know.