Sounds like we're on the same path, we got our son his snake for his birthday in June and got the zoo med 40 gal starter kit. I didn't find this place until we had him for a couple weeks. Definitely do not use the heat mat without a thermostat. Ours actually got hot enough to crack the bottom of the tank. Petsmart swapped it out for us since we asked them if we needed anything else that wasn't included in the kit and they told is we didn't. We did go the cheap route and found a digital thermostat on Amazon for less than $20. It's been working great for over a month now. If you do have the same kit as us that has two separate screens that make up the top cover, the biggest change I made to help with humidity was to replace the larger piece of screen with a piece of 1/4 inch plexiglass that was cut the exact same size as the screen. We are using two lights with a daytime on a timer and dimmer and we just put them on the front screen part. You can't set them on the plexiglass or they will melt it very quickly. I was the one that made that mistake and now the plexiglass has a very slight warp after just a few seconds. Our guy is doing great in the 40 gal but he was probably more than a year old when we got him from PetSmart since he had been there since the previous August. He is very laid back from all the handling he got there. We added three more hides and left the log hide that came with the kit and added a lot of fake greenery, so he has quite a bit of clutter. He still uses the log most often. We also leave the bedding pretty thick since he burrowed quite a bit when we first got him. We are using aspen but I started mixing it with some coco husk we picked up at repticon. Hope no one is offended that I offered a differing opinion but just wanted to say it might not be absolutely necessary to mothball or trash the setup you just spent maybe $200 on. Best of luck, hope things go as well for you as they have for us. This place is the best place I have found to learn.

Sent from my LG-H900 using Tapatalk