Do some research on it: Hempy Bucket.
Hempy Bucket is a basic Passive Hydroponic style of growing. Basically you give the plants a neutral PH and extremely aerated medium to grow in, and provide a water reservoir in the bottom where they can ALWAYS drink from. Since most of the root mass is not touching the water, they are constantly supplied with fresh oxygen. Also for that reason, it's virtually impossible to overwater.
The Hempy Bucket method says that you must use nutes on every watering so it always has nutes for growth. You should also flush the whole system every other week as to clean the reservoir of unused nute salts.
The Hempy Bucket is time tested and proven. But nowadays people are often changing the Perlite or Perlite-Vermiculite mix for Coco, so they grow some awesome plants in Coco Hempy Buckets. If you have access to Coco you should probably try it out!
And yeah, in my pot I have absolutely nothing else than medium grain perlite. I put hydroton on the top layer to stop the perlite from turning green (normally algae).
I don't have easy access to Coco so I decided to go with 100% Perlite. With 100% perlite I water every 2 days. Flush every Saturday. (I chose this because I'm a bit of a watering freak)
Normaly Hempy Buckets have a 4:1 or 3:1 ratio of Perlite to Vermiculite. This reduces the need for watering, making it possible for a setup to be watered once every week (depending on pot size).
So, as you see, Hempy Bucket is a powerful hydroponic method with the simplicity of hand-watering.
I think it's quite genius.
Check it out! =D