There is no such thing as a small flush. You either wash the salts and the built-up nutes out of the soil, or it's not a flush. We have found that it takes around three times the volume of the container of fresh water to accomplish this task. If you use warm water it helps to dissolve the salt a little easier and a little less water could be used. Fox farms also has a product called sledgehammer that helps dissolve the salts and again needs less water for a complete flush.
Some people claim that if you water to 20% runoff each time, that you don't need to flush, but this is a mistake in math. It would take 15 waterings at 20% runoff to equal the amount of water going through in a proper 3x flush.