Nah , you can pull a lb a week in spare time easy , especially doing hydroponics , its all in how you set up the system , lets use my flood & drain tables as an example.
Big rez means less time topping off so i used all 50 gallon rez's , next i brought fresh water directly to each rez via 1 inch pvc & made a gang valve , each rez water supply has its own fawcet & garden hose ran directly thru rez lid .
Next is water disposal , fuk buckets , i use small pool sump pumps that stay in each rez at all times with the dump hoses running thru the lids & tapped directly into the buildings 6 inch grey waste water system . If i need to top off i twist a fawcett , if i need to dump i flip a light switch powering the pump , a garden sprayer filled with 30% h202 & a toilet brush makes rez cleaning a 5 minute task , i can dump , clean , refill , add nutes & ph a rez in under an hour with zero mess or clean up .
I monitor each tables ph & ppm constantly via permenant probes & just unscrew my meter & go from table to table , ph checks every 4 to 7 days takes around an hour , rez top off's takes 3 to 5 minutes a rez .
Never reuse hydraton or net pots , it takes hrs to clean that shit to save a $100 bill , i toss all net pots & rocks into trash & use fresh each grow , to clean new rocks fast use 5 gallon buckets with hundreds of holes drilled in bottoms & sides then i put 6 5 gallon buckets in a utility shower for about half an hour & let them rinse .
I could write pages on how to speed flood & drain rigs up , i worked 12 to 18 hrs a day running a union construction company before retiring & still had time to operate 8 seperate 4ft x 8ft flood & drain tables & pull 5 to 6 lbs a week .
My Achilles heel was harvesting , trimming ,up 5 to 6 lbs ,cloning & resetting up a 50 clone sea of green table every weekend , i used hired help at $200 to $300 a day & with 4 fellow growers plus myself got everything chopped , trimmed & set back up on my day off .
Its all in how you automate & plan for speed .