In my last post I forgot to mention that I think your mold problems may have been partly caused by laundry soap residue.

When I read your first post about your “Creepy Pants” experiment the first thing that concerned me was laundry detergent residue in the pants and whether or not that would be harmful to the worms. As a former hobby fish breeder, I once had a dozen fish tanks and I soon learned that the cotton fish towel rags I used when I clean the tanks and washed in laundry detergent caused algae blooms in the tanks. I stopped using detergent and began washing them with bleach, which I then neutralized in the rinse cycle with pond or aquarium dechlorinator use at 6-8x strength, and then followed with a 2nd plain water rinse cycle.

Even though I no longer have fish tanks I still keep a big bottle of pond dechlorinator on hand, which is much more concentrated and cheaper than aquarium dechlor. I use it whenever do a load of laundry and use bleach, because plain water rinsing doesn’t remove it all and that’s why things like white t-shirts that are routinely bleached end up getting holes in them. If anyone is interested in trying dechlor in their washloads, please wait until the rinse water has filled the tub and it is agitating and then pour the dechlor, pre-dilluted in a cup or two of into the tub. Undiluted dechlor can cause permanent spots on clothes.

Vinegar will also neutralize bleach , however it much more expensive to use. I use vinegar to neutralize bleach odor whenever I sanitize my wood cutting boards and hummingbird feeders. When I clean my worm bins I use bleach, followed by dechlorinator rinse, followed by vinegar rinse (for good measure), followed by a final plain water rinse.