I ran a deep water culture set up before. Are you top feeding or running it as a circling nutrient that connects the bottom of the buckets? I have lots of pics of my set up to help show you. Zem is right about the pump!! Its not going to be cheap and you do need a EM pump. Sounds like you have 5-7 12 inch air stones so their for you have a 5-7 DWC set up. I did mine in 5 gallon buckets with a 40 gallon res. And than I had a 5 gallon bucket the was controlled by a float valve for toping the res off with fresh water. The 5 gallon bucket that had fresh water had to be elevated above the res, again controlled by the float valve.