Fermentation can be safer than raw veggies actually. just make sure you have 2%+ brine by weight of the veggies and the water and you should be ok. keep the ferment in a cooler to let the lacto bacillus do their thing at optimal temperatures.
if there is stringy/fluffy mold then your ferment went south and you should throw generally to be on the safe side. if it's more brain like white folding without wispy bits you should be ok to just skim it. (kahm yeast is harmless generally)
if you are really paranoid you can buy some pH strips to see if the lacto bacteria got the veggies down to the proper pH. botulism is basically impossible for a setup like this as long as you are following the basic guidelines and not trying to do some weird canning/fermentation setup. (botulism needs low competing bacteria[aka improper canning where you kill off all the good bacteria and leave the botulism spores], low salinity [more canning], anaerobic environment[technically this can happen in a ferment since the outgas from the bacteria is co2], and finally non-acidic environment[the lacto bacillus makes it an acidic environment pretty quickly])
there's also two schools of thought to letting it be or pushing down. some people push the ferment down under the brine every day until it gets established and some people let it go until they taste it however long it that takes. the first camp think that by doing that you push any potential contaminants down under the brine where it can't reproduce that well so there is never any big problem. the second camp just take the chance that they were clean enough to not introduce any molds (but there are molds in the air)
the other thing you can do to help is to make your own co2 blanket by mixing baking soda and vinegar and then pouring the co2 over the open jars. Be careful not to splash any of that liquid into your brine though! (similar to how you blow out a candle in science class). I've tried it and it seems to help but i'm not 100% convinced it is required.
Mold spores are in the air, on the food you're fermenting, everywhere. They can get in while you're filling the container. Operating hygienically and producing an environment where they won't thrive (keeping the solids submerged) is good prevention.
if there is stringy/fluffy mold then your ferment went south and you should throw generally to be on the safe side. if it's more brain like white folding without wispy bits you should be ok to just skim it. (kahm yeast is harmless generally)
if you are really paranoid you can buy some pH strips to see if the lacto bacteria got the veggies down to the proper pH. botulism is basically impossible for a setup like this as long as you are following the basic guidelines and not trying to do some weird canning/fermentation setup. (botulism needs low competing bacteria[aka improper canning where you kill off all the good bacteria and leave the botulism spores], low salinity [more canning], anaerobic environment[technically this can happen in a ferment since the outgas from the bacteria is co2], and finally non-acidic environment[the lacto bacillus makes it an acidic environment pretty quickly])
there's also two schools of thought to letting it be or pushing down. some people push the ferment down under the brine every day until it gets established and some people let it go until they taste it however long it that takes. the first camp think that by doing that you push any potential contaminants down under the brine where it can't reproduce that well so there is never any big problem. the second camp just take the chance that they were clean enough to not introduce any molds (but there are molds in the air)
the other thing you can do to help is to make your own co2 blanket by mixing baking soda and vinegar and then pouring the co2 over the open jars. Be careful not to splash any of that liquid into your brine though! (similar to how you blow out a candle in science class). I've tried it and it seems to help but i'm not 100% convinced it is required.