full disclosure, i keep holding back on dropping Ricky references due to your avatar
in promix, that's the way to go. I used to do the same thing in coco when i was doing aggressive shit with it (well over a decade ago -- funding college and shit). hit it with high EC for a week, then flush and replenish with 1/4 strength for a day, then back up around 2.0 EC. the monsters back then... it works though! and when you push like that you learn a lot because like you said, oftentimes a lot of symptoms look the same but when you're on the edge enough, you start to figure out that one particular leaf twist is indicative of that, and that one weird yellow patch is indicative of something else, etc. fuck, even the way the leaves angle themselves can tell you stories.