I'm not entirely sure about some of these statements. I use ebb and flow and I also use coco which is about as granulated as they come. The trick there is to line the bottom of the pots with hydroton and then use pots with only a few holes on the side instead of the net pots. From there you can either decide to clean out the floating particulates or not, like I do. I have a good cup worth of coco that sticks to the sides of my table, pots, and finally to the bottom of the table once the water drains. There seem to be two types of particles in coco, a finer substance like chocolate syrup that falls to the bottom of a glass of milk and then the chunky particles but those almost always float. The pasty stuff settles to the bottom of the table and res pretty quickly and the chunky stuff floats. I may be headed for disaster someday but after 4 months still no issues. Not sure you can get away with this with anything other then coco though as I would imagine everything else would sink.