Congrats on the threesome! (that just sounds so wrong
) I hatch one batch of bbs daily, and put what I don't feed right away into the refrigerator. I feed this in the morning & late afternoon after work, ad in the evening around 9pm or so I feed fresh, and put the rest in a 1 pint used sour cream container. Other breeders I know will get two batches going daily, 12 hours apart. I find refrigerating the bbs in some brine solution slows their metabolism, so they don't grow or consume the yolk sack which contains the nutrition the fry need.
I'm waiting for my wife to finish taking a shower before I go dropping the water pressure doing my hatchery in the basement, so I have a chance to search my docs for a post I saved on how I do mine, here you go;
Secrets? I don't have any secrets; they are all pretty much common knowledge. I can tell you the procedure I follow every night with my hatchery, and what some other folks do as well.
I'm cheap, I use a 2 liter bottle for hatching in, and built a box with a dimmer to contain the light, and heat. The dimmer adjusts the temperature, you can see the setup here;
[URL="http
/www.fishforums.net/content/New-World-Cichlids/136880/http-www-fishforums-net-index-php-showtopic-136880hl-/"]http/www.fishforums.net/content/New-Worl...opic-136880hl-/[/URL]
You can just as easily use a desk lamp, or other lamp in an enclosed area to keep the temperature at 80F. I imagine a deep drawer from a discarded dressed would work good, a cardboard box would probably be a bad idea due to being more flammable. I've seen people run hatcheries with a 2-liter bottle, and a gooseneck desk lamp on the corner of a table. Anything that provides light 24/7, and a constant temperature of 80F will do.
I used to run my hatchery off of a small air pump; it's hooked into my centralized system now. You do want plenty of aeration; this keeps the artemia cysts suspended in the brine solution.
You can see from the pics in the link how much water I fill with, about 1 1/2 liters. I don't add any dechlorinator, just cold tap water. I add 2 tablespoons of non-iodized salt; I've been using livestock salt, $3 for a 50-pound bag. I told you I was cheap. I also add about 3/4 teaspoon of baking soda, and since doing a little experimenting, 3 drops of chlorine bleach. I've seen breeders add a drop or two of acriflavin instead of bleach; the idea behind either of these is to keep bacteria levels down. The baking soda increases hardness; some folks will use Epsom salt instead.
So, after adding salt, baking soda, bleach and eggs I give the hatchery a good stir, and ignore it until the next night. The next night I pull the hose out of the hatchery, put the hatchery on the table, and shine a bright light on the bottom, this makes the bbs settle to the bottom. I then get what is left from the previous evening hatch out of the fridge, and get my bbs cup, which is nothing more than a large deep plastic cup with a paper coffee filter rubber banded to the top. I take my turkey baster (every aquarist should have a turkey baster) and take the previous hatch out of the old sour cream container I use to store bbs. I have a 1" square hole cut in the top; this lets a little fresh air in during storage. The stored bbs goes into the filter/cup gizmo, and drains while the hatchery is settling. After about 3 minutes I pour a little fresh water into the filter to rinse. A few minutes later I take the baster, and add some of the fresh bbs from the hatchery to the now empty & rinsed out sour cream container. To get past the shells floating at the top, without mixing them in, rub your nose a couple of times with you finger. Touch the surface of the bbs hatchery. Oil from your skin reduces surface tension, and the shells all go to the edge.
Now I add a little more water to the filter, and walk around feeding the older bbs to older fry. Once this is done, I take some of the freshly hatched bbs, and add them to the filter. I go through the same rinsing procedure before feeding these to younger fry. The sour cream container goes in the fridge, the hatchery, hose, and top go to the utility sink for a good rinse and refill, and it starts over again.
This procedure takes about 10 minutes; I try to multitask through it. Many people will get two batches going, one in the morning, and one in the evening. I hate mornings, and don't need this extra 10 minutes of work when I could be sucking down coffee; one batch daily being refrigerated has worked fine for years.
You will have to experiment a bit with how much salt, baking soda, or epsom salt to add to get the optimum hatching rate. This should give you a good starting point.
