If you just want a way to keep your buckets topped off here's what I'd do. Raise your buckets(water level) higher than your res. Hook up a pump that runs to all of your buckets from your res. Use those ebb and flow fittings with the rubber seal and position them at the bottom of your buckets. Somewhere in there before the first bucket put 1 or 2 check valves so your buckets can't drain back into your res when the pump is off. Then I'd drill an overflow hole, where you want the water to stay, in each of your buckets and plum them together using PVC or tubing. Your overflows would feed back into your res through gravity which is why your buckets would need to be higher. Set a timer to whatever you want and let the pump replenish your buckets everyday or whenever. RDWC usually requires a chiller because you have a pump constantly running so your res gets hot. The way I described would still need air stones in each bucket though but if your pump crapped out you would be ok for a while. Good luck to ya.