OK, I increased the difficulty on the pool. and I will see if that changes anything.
solo mining will be tough
zcash difficulty too high
btw did it work?
Looks like it was a combination of slightly off algorithm for collision detection and majorly bugged hashing algorithm. The hashing algorithm was causing the wrong solutions to be posted to the pool, and potentially correct solutions being lost. I have started from scratch and it looks like solutions are being found and at a good rate too.