Only run DWC once, but all I know is you just change water once a week. What you’re thinking about would be sort of RDWC instead, water circulating so you would need to control the runoff, something like this:
With a tote I would just put an airstone inside and change water when needed, depending on the size of the tote. I had spare pots, so just prepared the new pHed water with nutes in the spare and change the lid (with plant) from one pot to another. Those irrigation systems might come handy with coco, soil and even hempy buckets …
Usually you only top feed for the first couple weeks or days, if that. Just until the roots are in the res. Once they’re in the water, I don’t think you’d gain anything by top feeding like that bubbleponics page. Even growweedeasy says they only really do it at the start of their DWC. To get the plants established quicker.
Id just use like a pool noodle or something instead of a netpot in the DWC setup and slide the clone in. Youll need to support the plant from the top some how but it makes for a very easy transplant from cloner to final home.
No top feeding needed you can just drop the roots in the water.
The few times I did hydro before I didn’t top feed at all. I just put my seedlings at the bottom oft the net pot filled the water close to touching and turned my air pump on full blast. That was in 5 gallon buckets though not big totes with 6-8 (10?)plants per tote.(doing a very short veg, flipping at like 3 or 4 nodes)
With seeds in rockwool you would just need to water from top until roots reached the water below, I don’t think it is worth mounting an automatic irrigation system for such a short time, also seedlings are very delicate and overwatering kills them, better for them you controlling that …
