thank you drewski. i have changed a few settings, removed the pi-hole IP from the WAN section, and added a cmd for No DNS Rebind allowing the pi-hole ip. I read through this thread SOLVED: DD-WRT - DNS issue where it was recommended to disable the wan ip, and DNS Rebind Protection in LAN · Issue #292 · pi-hole/pi-hole · GitHub where they talk about dns no rebind.
seems ok to me?
