Feeding Appistos
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You pretty much nailed it on the head with live and frozen foods. I feed mine mysis shrimp, blood worms and brine shrimp every night and live black worms every morning. They breed like clockwork. I've found they also like sucking snails from their shells too.
I use "formula one" frozen food as a staple. Its marketed for marine use, but works for FW too. It's great because it has all kinds of different things in it including vitamins, minerals and veggies (you don't get that in most frozen foods). I use it because my panduros will not touch dry staple food.
Avoid premixed frozen foods like formula one, they foul the water very quickly because of the agar they use to stick it all together. Apistos will readily accept a staple pellet food. I'd suggest Tetra Colorbits or if you can get it, the Sera Discus Color, Feeding frozen and live food all the time isn't good, they won't get all the nutrients that they should be. Alternating the staple foods and the frozen/live is the best way to go about it, and the healthiest for the fish.
You're right a dry staple is best, but sometimes it's not an option.(as is the case with my panduros) I do take care to feed the smallest little slivers of formula one possible in an effort to keep uneaten food to a minimum however.
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Its always an option. 99% of the fish out there, including wild caught fish will learn to take other foods. Its just a matter of learning how to get them to eat it. Panduros are not a hard fish to feed flakes/pellets to. Starve them for 3 days, try the pellets, if they don't eat them go another day. Starving them for this period won't harm them. Another method is to mix the dry foods in with frozen while your feeding. Don't worry about the size of the food too much, the fish will break it while trying to eat it. I have wild caught Badis badis sp. that are not any bigger than maybe 1.5cm in size as adults, also one of the hardest species of fish to entice into eating flakes or pelleted food. I feed them full size Tetra Colorbits, and they figured out to keep picking at it and break it apart. Other fish will as well.
I've got nothing but respect for your experience Natuka, but please believe me when I say, THESE FISH WILL NOT TAKE DRY FOOD. Forget the three days, I fasted these fish for close to two weeks in an attempt to simulate a dry season and get them onto dry food. NO DICE.
The male was huge when I got him so I suppose its possible that they are wild caught although they were not labled as such. I agree with your assertion however that a dry staple food is best, and that nearly all fish can be conditioned to accept it.
Check with where you got them Moo and find out if they were wild caught or not. If they were wild caught, there could be other issues with why they aren't willing to accept foods other than frozen or live.