I'm playing Infinity right now, and seeing that thermalillies got nerfed and will be nerfed even further, I thought of giving the hydro's another chance, only this time a bit different.
this time I put together something like this...
it's basically a vertical column of the hydro's, following this pattern
and without water it looks like this
the design can be both vertically and hortizontally expanded, though if you decide to get horizontally I'd suggest adding more mana spreaders because there's a range to how far the flowers can send mana to spreaders and if you go vertically I'd suggest either using higher tier spreaders or to use focusses, because the normal mana spreaders can only send so much mana.
the top side looks like this
so it's possible to use this setup completely underground and have the mana be send upwards to the mana pool that's above ground.
it's important to keep a water layer above the highest hydro, because that water layer will make sure the water won't run out (hydro's can only absorb water horizontally, not vertically from what I noticed)
it's also important to not have all the hydro's on the same level, but to switch them up, this way they shouldn't be able to drain all the water.
and lastly, be sure to first place the water and then the hydro's, becasue these suckers can suck unbelievably fast
I should also note that I came up with this design by watchign a similar design from watching a livestream from
@ZeekDaGeek
also note that I have no idea if this is an efficient setup or not, but it's simple mana generation in bulk