Two cones, staggered a day apart
A single hatchery cannot give you newly hatched shrimp every day, because a batch takes roughly a day to hatch and the shrimp are at their most nutritious in the first hours after hatching, while their yolk sacs remain. Run two cones or bottles and start them a day apart: each morning one batch is ready to harvest at its peak while the other is mid-hatch for tomorrow. Label each cone with the day and time it was set up, because in a busy fish room 'which one is ready?' is a question you will otherwise answer wrong at least once a week. Use the same salt mix and the same measure of eggs each time, so the rhythm becomes automatic and a poor hatch stands out as a change worth investigating rather than background noise.
Harvest clean, leaving eggs and shells behind
At harvest time, switch off the air and let the cone settle for several minutes. Hatched shrimp gather lower in the cone, drawn towards light, while empty shells float and unhatched eggs sink, so drawing the shrimp off from the bottom outlet — or siphoning from the lit layer — leaves most of the rubbish behind. Strain the harvest through a fine mesh or coffee filter and rinse it briefly in fresh water before it goes to the fry; the rinse keeps hatchery salt water out of a freshwater fry tank, which matters when you are feeding several times a day. Any surplus keeps for the day in a shallow container of salt water in the fridge, but treat it as a reserve, not tomorrow's plan — the staggered second cone is tomorrow's plan.
Cleanliness decides whether the system stays reliable
Brine shrimp water is warm, salty and rich, which makes it an excellent bacterial culture the moment a batch is finished. Scrub the emptied cone, lid and airline parts as part of the same daily routine, not as a weekly deep clean, and refill with freshly mixed salt water rather than topping up the old. Slimy walls, a sour smell, or shrimp dying in the cone before harvest are all the same message: the cleaning rhythm has slipped. Keep the hatchery somewhere warm and steady, since a cone in a cold room hatches slowly and unevenly, and check the air pump is pushing a lively stream of bubbles — weak aeration leaves eggs piled in dead spots where they never hatch at all.
Read a poor hatch like a short checklist
When a batch underperforms, the causes are nearly always one of four: the water was too cool, the eggs are old or were stored damp, the salt level drifted from your usual mix, or the aeration was too weak to keep eggs suspended. Change one variable at a time and mark the cone, or you will never know which fix worked. For an underperforming cone, put a follow-up question to KinsLe's Kinny; he answers using the KinsLe Answers library.