Also considering going to dwc pretty soon but scared of crazy pH levels I read a lot of stories about all-in-one systems and that's about all I can have with my space if you have any input I would appreciate it
I have a number of cuttings from one plant that I experimented with. I tried coco and perlite, straight perlite, coco, DWC with an air stone. They were outside and the air pump fried because of the rain. It did get me some roots to the solution and since then all I do is change out the solution every two weeks. The others are Hempy buckets with a hole two inches up. The pop bottle coco/perlite, perlite, are smaller than the other two which is natural considering the limited root area.
The coco/perlite on the left may be a touch more full than the bucket but then again the cuttings are different. They all got General Hydroponics MaxiGro in veg and MaxiBloom in flower. The perlite one lost a branch due to an accident and I taped up the split which you can see at its trunk. I only fed the non-bucket ones once a day. I would guess that they all would be bigger if I had the bucket aerated more and the medium grows fed throughout the day. Just because I have the coco to reuse my next grows will be in it otherwise the bucket might be something I would try again.