Well I've been price shopping and making equipment lists and so forth and here's what I've accomplished:

Air Pump - decent two-port aquarium pump for about $15 at Wally World.
Tubing and Stones - 50 foot roll for about $4 and long stones for about $4.50 each at Wally World.
25 gal Rubbermaid bin - $8-9 pretty much anywhere.
Wire shelves - $25-30 at Target, Walmart, etc.

I still need net pots, grow medium, nutrients, lights, and meters. I've looked and I just can't find a local shop that sells this kind of stuff with any level of reasonable quality. Can someone recommend a good US online shop? I just need some basic 4-6" net pots, probably hydroton medium (I'm thinking of just using Jiffy-7 starters to germinate), cheap basic nutrients, pH strips, an EC meter (I do need one, right?) and a run-of-the-mill 2-tube florescent light around 2 feet long.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'm planning to make my final purchases within the next week, hopefully start my seeds this week so I can build my DWC and have it tested out before the seeds are ready.

As far as the lights are concerned I know they'll be a bit underpowered, but this is a test run of my abilities and the equipment using most likely just some leafy vegetables so being able to pound them with lumens isn't vital. Even so, what would be the best bulbs to get? I've also heard that those CFM bulbs (the twisty "power saver" type that you can use in the place of regular incandescents) aren't too bad for growing. Is that true of all of them or are there certain ones that give better spectrum output?