There are a lot of growers that don't use a top drip at all. I have homemade buckets and only one has drip apparatus any more. I use this for very young clones going into netpots. If you fill your bucket to where the netpot is sitting in the water about an inch, the medium will get water to very young roots through capillary action. I had a discussion with a grower buddy about this subject and I was led to run an experiment with a couple of clones going into buckets. I put one in the 6" netpot and one in a 4" netpot. Less media in the 4"pot, more water in the bucket, shorter distance for roots to grow till they hit water. The plant in the 4" pot looks like it had a weeks head start at 4 weeks. The downside is the plant isn't very stable and will tip.
This is a 6" pot in a 5 gal with a dripper. There are no drippers in the flower room at all.None of my root mass is in the medium it's all in the water