There was a huge spike in Zcash hashrate and difficulty today. It seems the Z11 has entered the mix. Right now, if you pay 0.13$/kWh and at current difficulty, you’re better off disabling the Z9 minis and buying coins directly. Still, there is something to have from mining ZEN/ZCL at the moment, but I guess they will follow suit as hashrate distributes. So if prices don’t increase dramatically, this may be the end of Z9 mini mining.
Was just logical this will happen, even faster with low prices …
Welcome to the POW hardware arms race and geographical low electricity price centralization 
Absolutely, it was just a matter of time. With the price drop troughout 2018, I don’t think anybody really broke even on the minis (maybe owners of the 1st batch who sold the mined coins directly).
I’m wondering how the release of new miners will pace with the price recovery movement we’re seeing overall in crypto.
The way that ASICs are priced for consumers seems to remove the massive gain potential. Of course, this entirely depends on how fast the price spikes and how limited ASICs become. Manufacturers seem to mine themselves if it makes more sense to do that (at least Innosilicon does). I do expect the Z9 mini to be profitable again at some point later this year or early next year, but that depends on outpacing the climbing hashrate. E.g., Older models of sha256 miners became temporarily profitable again during the last Bitcoin bull run.
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Mine still does .7 \ mo so technically profitable I guess
That’s all up on how much someone pays for electricity. When talking generally i personally would allways use $0.13 for electricity cost as this is about the world average price.
This said i have my doubts that the S9 models for example have been again even temporary profitable at BTC at 5,300
mostly only temporary and on lower difficulty waves. Pretty sure the daily average is lower than 0.7 if you mine at $0.12 per kw/h (that’s the price that resulted in a 0.70 profit)
TBH, I mine coins at a loss that I believe in. It’s still a hobby for me, so my Z9 mini will stay on! 
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That’s all ok, you as well believe in your electricity company which makes about $1 per day per Z9 mini from you … All these electricity companies must love crypto 
If we stick with the plan to launch Ycash in July with Equihash<200,9> as the POW algorithm (and a final decision has not yet been made), you’ll be able to use your Z9 mini to mine Ycash from July until we switch the POW algorithm in October. (Of course, whether that makes sense financially will depend on the fiat valuation of Ycash, which is hard to predict that this point.)