I see. I was hoping someone with experience mining Monero could provide a simple answer to my question so I came to the Monero forum. My question is specific to Monero and Monero mining pools. I assumed the best place to find people with Monero experience would be in the Monero thread. Of course the "Pools" thread is about mining pools and some of the millions of posts in that thread are even about Monero mining. I guess I'll try that thread in the hopes that someone following that threat can answer my Monero question. Thanks.
Then again, I can mine and trade ZCash and ETH which are both more profitable right now than XMR.
There is a xmr mining thread in that sub forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=653467.940itīs quite active so someone should be able to answer your questions.
I know that your hashrate can change quite alot depending on what pool you use. Never really found out why. I just changed pools until I found one that gave me about the right amount of hashes.