I had the same problem! I stored the plunger down, then make sure I pushed it up far enough to make sure the gel was at the top of the tip before i measured notches. It would go through 3 notches before the gel would even come up to the tip sometimes. I watched a video on either here or on youtube about how to use the horsepaste.. so i looked and saw how much the guy was taking and made mine look to be about half that. So really, I had no clue how much I was even taking.