Food for Anomalochromis sp.

[BadHairDay]

Hi, I'm struggling to find a suitable food form for my butterfly cichlids. They are adults, and a few years old, so I'm keeping them alive, but they are so difficult to feed that I'm also massively overfeeding and thus risk polluting the tank with uneaten food.
The problem is that they are very nervous, so when I go to feed them they disappear, and don't come out again for at least a minute or two. Pelleted food tends to sink too quickly, and they tend to ignore it anyway, and general flake is so small that it immediately breaks down into a cloud of tiny particles.
I've tried small sticks, but they go the other way and take an age to sink (and the fish won't feed from the surface).
Is there a middle ground, a mid-size flake or other that sinks slowly enough for my daft fish to spot it and grab it?
I'm in the UK, and if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears, thank you!

 

[gwand]

I feed my Anomalochromis thomasi Repashy Grub, which I put in a small dish on the substrate. In this manner there is no mess on the substrate. I also feed them Omega One mini pellets, which are slow sinkers, frozen brine shrimp and frozen blood worms.

 

[GaryE]

I'll say this could be way easier than you think. Or not.

First, how is the tank decorated. Are there broad leafed plants for cover?
How large is the tank?
What else is in there?
What is the substrate (fine, medium or pebbles)?

Are the fish showing signs of wasting?

thomasi are a fish I've kept several times, and they will eat most foods. They just won't look like they do. The food will fall in, in the usual small quantities, and in time, when it's softened in the water, they'll eat it. If you have only one brand of flake, no. A lot of fish dislike one food in particular (flake and pellet are the same, just in differing formats).

Underfeed, and they'll get to it.

@gwand and I have both bred and raised thomasi, so we aren't just taking wild guesses. In the years I kept mine, they simply didn't grab. Sometimes, they stayed back when the food went in, or seemed to ignore it.

Extra nervousness can be an issue. How often do you do partial water changes, and how much? Fish can get skittish as water becomes polluted. I'm a 30% per week water changer.

 

[gwand]

An interesting behavior I have observed in my thomasi (whom I feed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays) is on non-feeding days they become earth eaters. They eat the sand where food landed on feeding days. They take the sand in their mouths, process some nutrients from it and then spit out the sand. Maybe Gary E has observed this too.