Advice needed on dead volume in reservoirs while staining

Hey everyone,

Any tips on how to handle small volumes in reservoirs that need to be dispensed to a 96-well plate with a multichannel pipette?

My staining volume (dispensed directly on the pellet in the plate) is less than 2 ml for all my samples. I can pick up about 50% of the volume for my samples (e.g 2 x 50ul x 12 mutichannel tips), and the rest is incomplete (the pipette sucks in air, only the edges get full volume). I could maybe pick it all up if I do the 50% and then manually take the rest and add to wells one by one, but I'm trying to avoid that at all costs (introduces more variability). I'm ok to do max 6 pickups manually, so i need to somehow get the volume from edges to the centre of reservoir.

I am wondering, how do you deal with this issue, without making 50% overage of the staining cocktail (obviously too wasteful), or adding extra buffer that dilutes the concentrations of antibodies?

Thanks in advance!