Drip Watering Coco vs. 15min Flood Cycles in Hydroton

I have been playing around with coco for a few months now. It's changed my thinking greatly and I now find myself wanting to redesign the grow space again. :) I was thinking simple hand watered 3 gallon buckets at first which led me to thinking of a drip system of sorts. In my own experiments I have discovered that the mothers I keep in 3 gallon pots with fine coco can last 3/4 days maybe between watering. I have learned that if I water them more then once a day I get extreme mold and watering everyday only causes bad mold; what this is telling me is that I need to be thinking of how little can I water, not how often can I water. This is totally a different line of thinking then my space and equipment was purchased for which for reference was a recycling multi-flood Ebb and Flow table of hydroton. The coco system I have now is so butchered up from the original system of watering every 3 minutes to now watering every day. Everyday watering it seems is still too much and that's with a 50/50 mix of hydroton and coco. Bottom line, I need to rethink the space and how I do this.

All this leads me to a fundamental question. How much nutrient uptake and water uptake do plants need on a daily basis? If I can redesign my system to get away with watering every couple days, is that even really what I want? Wouldn't I be better off in a system where water is constantly exchanged or is there enough water in a pot of coco for the plant to uptake freely before it drys out? Comparing growth rates let's say; how do they compare? Can one water a 3 gallon pot of pure coco every 2 or 3 days (whatever it turns out to be before the coco drys out) and the grow rates compare at least as good as say soil, or just as good as E&B hydroton bed?

For kicks I have a basil plant sitting in 106 degree heat, mix of coco and potting soil, it gets watered every 3 or 4 days, and growing like a son of a gun. How do pure coco grows rank with soil/coco grows I wonder? Surely they must be much much slower with the soil being there then what I am referring too which is watering with 100% nutrients and ph adjusted.