It is amazingly similar to my uncles basement garden. He has nearly the exact same setup, even has the T5, 8 bulb fluorescents.
Was wondering what you are using to aerate your 55 gallon res and do you use a RO filter for the water?
In the basement during winter, the buckets had to be off the cold floor...he used bricks and it seemed to work. He also used the white buckets and got a bit of algae, painted them with Rustoleum plastic paint, but it just scrapes off...guess black duct tape is next.
take its that wet weight? anyway, sorry bout the rot - fix your humidity and next time, take the sleeves off the cubes and top up with hydroton to cover the blocks.
Thats awesome man. With only 2 week veg time, you did quite well. I'm curious as to the costs of your system. Also, did you buy a controller, or build one yourself?