Preventing dry back by converting to daily feeding help, soil.

you should always irrigate until entire volume is saturated, wait for top 1" to dry and repeat... how often and how concentrated your fetilizer is depends on multiple factors.. primarily how often you fertilize vs water-only. if the drinking of the plant warrants daily irrigations, do it... do you have to wait for top 1" to dry? not really, but you may get some algea and increase risk to something actually harmful with a constantly wet substrate. Some minimum loss of water-mass should occur before re-irrigating. your drainage qualities of substrate, the size of the plant and the size of the pot will dictate whether or not it is feasible. you only hve 20% perlite+vermiculite, so your drainage qualiteis are not optimal for such a method of irrigation. Wait until the pot loses at least half of its weight when recently watered. this will be well before 1" is dry up top, if you want to try pushing it. evaporation occurs at a fairly slow rate - surface to volume ratio limits exposure to some extent to atmosphere. in a matter of 2-3 even 5 days evaporation should not cause a problem whatsoever. look to other causes and other ways to manipulate the results you want. if you want to feed daily, go soilless. buy 100% soluble and chelated 'hydro' nutes.. improve drainage quality with 50/50 sphagnum peat to perlite or 70/30 coco to perlite (vermiculite is also a valid option as are other things) large chunks of anything or 'logs' (sticks and shit) are not a good thing to have. some fibrous material is good.. you want fluffy and airy. you need the right sized pot and plant for this to work smoothly.. when they are drinking fast enough you can do 2-3 fertigations a day if you want... or if the dynamics only allow 1/day stick to that... think some sources recommend a 25-33% "dryback" which really means loss of water weight, preferably the vast majority from the plant drinking vs evaporation.