Hey bud, been thinking this through a lot recently and I’m now successfully running the following system:
120x240cm flood&drain table sitting on top of a 200L reservoir
72 clones in 10cm rockwool cubes
As soon as my clones are rooted in the small root riot cubes, I pop them the rockwool (pre-soaked properly with nutes) then veg until I see roots coming out the rockwool (about 4 days).
Do not water the rockwool during these 4 days, it will encourage the roots to spread out faster.
Once the roots show out of the rockwool, I put them into flower and start top watering by hand daily for a week. About 100ml/plant/day.
After a week they will have enough roots that you can start flooding from below once per day, and they will dry back nicely.
They will stretch for the first 3-4 weeks of flower to about 60-80 cm depending on the strain.
you can increase the flooding frequency progressively, keeping them short helps to increase drybacks and the more often you feed them the better they grow.
I’m currently in week 5 doing 6x 4 min floods per day at Lights on + 2-3-4-5-6-7hrs