First meal - questions

[Rafters]

Update:

The wife and I bought some "Gourmet Rodents" and thawed them out, in the bag, in warm water for a while. Then took them out and lowered them in with some thongs and dangled them.

Both of these guys immediately hit them and started chowing down with no hesitation.

For the smaller snake we fed him an "Adult Mouse" and for the larger one a "Small Rat". They are currently swallowing them.

Questions:
1) Should we have fed them inside of their normal cages? The back of the adult mouse bag says "It is always recommended to feed a reptile in a secondary secure habitat outside of it's normal habitat." Are we teaching these things to attack anything we put inside their cages by doing this?
2) The owner has apparently been in a depressive funk for a bit. The water bowls were dirty and had algae(I cleaned them yesterday and gave them clean water), these snakes seemed really hungry, and it looks like they have old dried feces (I think) in the bedding. We bought cypress bedding when we clean out their cages here in the next couple days. If these guys haven't been fed very much lately, should we maybe feed them again this weekend?
3) Anything we need to know about cleaning the aquariums they live in? We can clean them with soap as long as we rinse them really well, correct?

Any other info would be great. I'm also looking around online but I prefer to hear from people on forums so someone can speak up if any bad advice crops up.

Thanks!