Epson ET-8550: pink hue in photo prints after sitting a couple months

[Fried Chicken]

Went on vacation, came back to print vacation photos and the images are printing with a pink hue.
First print I thought I didn't load the right ICC profile, second print I double checked and: same thing.

Tips/suggestions? Maintenance?

Thanks in advance

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Please run a nozzle cleaning cycle and print and post the nozzle check print here

 

[Fried Chicken]

Running now; colors failing intermittently then completely. Looks like it wants several iterations, hopefully this solves it.

 

[Fried Chicken]

Ran three deep cleans: printer now wants me to wait 12 hours and then see. First yellow was spotty, then yellow/magenta failed completely, on the final pass magenta failed completely but all others were good.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

For how long was the printer idling ? It appears to me that the ink was running back through the ink tubes and pulled air into the dampers. It is possible to remove the tubes from the dampers, those cartridge like inserts in the printhead carriage, there should be some small amount of ink in the circular buffer which connects to the ink outlet. Please put a paper clip on the tube to close them to prevent more air pulling in and air running back to the tank(s) before you remove a tube from the damper.
You either can fill up some ink into the damper(s) or run an ink charge with the WICReset utility.

 

[Fried Chicken]

For how long was the printer idling ? It appears to me that the ink was running back through the ink tubes and pulled air into the dampers. It is possible to remove the tubes from the dampers, those cartridge like inserts in the printhead carriage, there should be some small amount of ink in the circular buffer which connects to the ink outlet. Please put a paper clip on the tube to close them to prevent more air pulling in and air running back to the tank(s) before you remove a tube from the damper.
You either can fill up some ink into the damper(s) or run an ink charge with the WICReset utility.

It sat for a couple months.

Could I alternatively just make a few prints to clear up the nozzles? A paper clip to close the tubes? Sounds like a hack; might you have a picture?
Thank you

 

[Epatcola]

Nozzles don't randomly block and unblock themselves on every nozzle check/clean cycle.

When you say deep clean i assume you mean the second clean cycle offered when you say a nozzle check failed. The word 'deep' does not appear in the printer manual.

If you get a bunch of (or all) intermittent nozzle failures it is very likely the associated damper is full of air.

You need to run a power clean cycle which is similar to the initial ink priming process. Unfortunately it uses a lot of ink and maintenance box.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm at this time assuming that there is no ink in the tubing and dampers, a new ink charge command would fix that via the WICReset utility - under Windows. I don't know if that utility would be available for Mac systems. WICReset offers you several other cleaning commands below the ink charge command.

I recommend you to order a spare waste ink/maintenance box - possibly via Amazon, non-OEM models from China are cheaper than the OEM version.

Ref paper Clip - see attached image

Such paper clip should be removed and all tubing connected when you run a cleaning cycle. The ink tubes connect to dampers which are similar to cartridges and can be taken out for inspection or replacement.