also i dont want to butt in a sweet fight or anything BUT....hydro is much more hands on and complicated than soil is, ive grown soil for over 5 yrs now and just went hydro about a year ago. first off, when you first grow marijuana in hydro (especially if youve never grown before indoor or at all) the plants become very finicky with nutes very quickly if you dont know what your doing or have a meter. i had a meter my first time and i even burned them a little, in dirt ive noticed u can bring ppms up much higher than in hydro and i paid for it for my first time. secondly, you can easily measure anything you want in soil also, just take some ph 5.5 water with or without nutes, dump it in your soil, take a cup and collect the water, measure the ppm and ph and thats a pretty good guess to what your plants are receiving. thirdly, when growing dirt you can avoid this very problem we're talking about, root rot, many first time hydroers either quit or lose whole crops to it, growing in dirt almost 90% eliminates that from happening as the dirt blocks much of the heat that plastic resevoirs soak up much of the time, so by growing in dirt he can avoid many problems as well as build a nice learning curve and get himself ready for bigger and better yields, once again didnt mean to get in your knit picking just wanted to throw my 2 cents as a long time soiler and a short time hydro grower bye.