Getting ready for my first grow and had a question about taking temperatures

Hey everybody, so this is my first post and I've been prepping for a while now and I'm getting ready to start my first grow. I've been picking up a lot of equipment and I have mostly everything so I've started putting my tent together getting ready for Day 0. Anyway, I've been trying to get an idea of how hot my tent is going to be with the lights running (will be using 600w mh and hps bulbs inside a radiant air-cooled reflector) and that's when my issue started.

After I got the light setup inside the tent I fired it up to make sure it worked and you know, just because. Obviously the room got pretty hot so I hooked up, in a not very permanent way, an inline fan and A LOT (25') of ducting that I hadn't measured yet. That made a little bit of a difference, it was noticeably a little cooler and the reflector could now be touched for a few seconds without horrible burning. It was at this time that I started trying to use these little battery (new bats) thermometer/hygrometer that I now believe to be somewhat inaccurate gave me reads in the high 90s. I did some research and learned about the length of the ducting, the number of turns in it, pushing vs pulling the air with the inline and continued to work on my room.

So today I did what I thought was a pretty good job of hooking up my carbon filter> 4" to 6" flange?> inline fan> a few feet of ducting> reflector> and then out my tent. There still is a lot of ducting left over that I haven't decided what exactly I'm going to do for intake and outake just yet, as I have viable ways of doing it, but I fired everything up to test it anyway. I let everything run for like 40 mins and came back to it after giving what I thought was good time to reach operating temperatures. I was pleasantly surprised and the very noticeable lack of heat pouring out of the room and I also the noticed the sucked in negative pressure look of my tent so my carbon filter will probably do the trick once I get going. So I take some temps about 14" under the light and they read again in the high 90s. I didn't think that could be right as the temperature seemed to me quite comfortable (very bright) but comfortable. I can even touch the all the reflector as it's not even getting anywhere near hot now.

I then tested two of those thermometers against each other and found they are at least a few degrees off from each other, so I tried using this hydrofarm thermocontroller I have for my seedling trays in the tent and it read 100.2. After which I got my fans hooked up inside the room to move the air around some under the lamp and it was only able to bring it down to 93.2 degrees.

So I guess in the end I'm just wondering if I'm not taking the temperature correctly as it doesnt seem that its 93 degrees in there, or its more possible that all my thermometers are inaccurate, or that I just need to find a way to cool the room another 20 or so odd degrees? Thanks in advance for any help!

well heat rises so get some ventilation in the top. and test your thermometers inside your house and match it up to the inside temp. do some experiments. if you don't have a fan already you need one that cools it down also and its good for plant strength.

If it helps here is a picture of how I have it set up currently, the little silver thing on top of the bucket is the thermometer and it read 92.3 at the time of this picture. Also there is a 27" box fan in the corner of the tent blowing on the meter. If I am taking temps correctly pretty sure its a decent set back, as I am already exhausting into another room and doing passive intake from the bedroom which is 71 degrees according to my central air/heat controls.

Here's a slightly more well lit picture. I do have my exhaust ventilation ran across the top of my tent and a box fan blowing directly on the meter. When taking the temperature is it skewed at all being exposed to that amount of light? Like when the weather reports the temperatures, those temperatures are what to expect in the shade, not in full sunlight. I just thought that is how meteorologists reported the temps because the direct sunlight temps were not accurate

its because its getting direct heat from under the lamp it needs to be in the corner at canopy height and also helps to have a cardboard flap over it blocking it from direct light.

plants handle the thermal or radiant heat from the lamp alot diff then the thermo does.
alot of people have multiple thermos in the grow area 1 at the intake 1 at canopy and 1 up higher

it might only be 80 degrees outside but find a piece of metal in direct sun and you could fry an egg sometimes

Thanks for the advice viper. So with moving the thermometer probe out of direct sunlight and also connecting another fan at the end of my exhaust I'm pulling high 82s low 83s which is way better. Hopefully when I finish the permanent exhaust line for tent I shave a little more off since at minimum I'll be cutting about 12' of ventilation off it's current length now. Also I'm waiting to get my DWC buckets working and in the room but my airstones came damaged so no hooking that up for a few days. But I was thinking since the reservoir is on the outside of the room with a chiller in it, the chilled soup being pumped in will also help lower the temp the way fans blowing on a bucket of ice does ?