[thstone]

It looks to me like the needle starts out slightly above "0" and then goes below "0" and starts bouncing off the lower limit stop (like its repeatedly trying to go lower than Empty but can't, so it bounces up a bit and then is driven back down). After doing this for a bit, the needle moves back above 0 for a moment and then moves to the correct level.

My guess is that the sending unit isn't working properly at power-on.