Hey guys, new member...

[Lija]

Jason, I don't think you treated enough burned by heat mats animals it is not fun for anyone involved, these burns are difficult to treat, usually there is big area affected and because of that the survival rates are not that high, especially in amphibians. that is not the place or time to argue about it and why would you put the probe directly on UTH? the idea is to use any source of heat the way it creates the gradient similar to such in a wild. You want to place your probe in a dead centre where animal lives, that is where we measure temps. It will be hotter closer to the heat source and colder further away. Not talking about snakes/beardies, etc here.
Anyhow lets focus on helping OP to have happy frogs that would live long by providing advise on safe and effective ways of doing things.

Oh there was also the question of UTH malfunctioning. They rarely malfunction if used properly and they are single use ( the ones that stick on). You can't reposition UTH once it is attached, otherwise you risk damaging it, malfunctioning and possibly fire.

[jasonm96]

I can understand it's not nice and I'm sorry to hear but this not the mats fault but rather the use of it and unfortunately some of the instructions that come with the mats are not in depth enough to prevent this... at least some mats provide good instructions and forums come in handy for discussing their use. You're right with the thermal gradients and heat mats can make these but not the same as a heat lamp or ceramic, they only create a hot spot, which must be controlled by a thermostat. So you keep the species at the room temp suitable for the cool end or apply additional overhead heat sources to warm the air and cool end and then the mat is used to create a warm spot. If you were using a heater that warms the ambient air as well, then you can move the thermostat probe to the middle or cool end, depending on what you wish to control but mats must be controlled directly. I prefer to buy the mats that don't have adhesive and they're the carbon clothes ones, which as far as I know have never malfunctioned but the printed ones have. I've stopped using mats for these reasons and much prefer overhead heating.

Anyway, yes let's focus on that. Haha!