i can tell you what has worked for me.. but i'm not gonna treat each type of pbass separately.
i got all but 3 of my pbass as tiny guys.. i kept them in tanks with the temp between 82 - 88 degrees.. the PH in all of my tanks is 7.6 and i do water changes to keep the TDS below 300 PPM and the nitrates at or below 40 PPM.
i test my tanks every other week, unless something doesn't look right (an extra test now and then when you're not sure never hurts). and i do water changes only as needed by the results of the testing, usually once a month, sometimes as long as 6 weeks because of the stocking level in each tank.
when they are tiny 2" - 3" i feed them frozen brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, and frozen krill. i feed the babies once or twice a day.. but i do NOT do power feeding to make them grow faster. i want them to remain healthy and grow at a natural rate.
at about 5" i start just chopping up market shrimp and catfish nuggets and add these in to the feeding rotation. Somewhere around 8" or 9" they start losing interest in the smaller foods (brine shrimp and blood worms). I've never had a fish refuse frozen krill no matter how big they are.. it seems to be an all around favorite.
Usually around this point i start adding more variety.. small hunks of chicken breasts, halved chicken hearts, small hunks of tuna and salmon, small hunks of beef heart.. i tried some lean pork one time, but it was a resounding failure.. not even the catfish would eat it.
i use RO/DI water for water changes and keep crushed coral under the decorative gravel in the bottom of the tank. i use the gravel vac rarely.. and then mostly to only get the pleco crap off the top of the gravel. i think, other than changing tanks, i've only actually "changed the diapers" thoroughly once or twice..
we tried to buy freshwater clams to help control the nitrates.. and either i never had enough or the fish were eating them.. i still keep finding empty shells now and then on top of the gravel.
I've never fed live fish intentionally, but i've had a couple cheap community fish that i've used to establish a tank get eaten. i believe that feeding live food increases the aggression level in the tank and increases the possibility that they will try to eat each other.
i think i'm probably doing something right.. i have 14 peacock bass: i've only lost 7 over the years, 3 tems to a tank crash while i was on vacation, 3 tiny orinos to crayfish (chalk this up to bad advise), and 1 4" orino that i can only assume was eaten by one of his brothers.. because i never found the body.. lol.
this is purely my experience, i'm not a scientist, all i have is what i've learned in the process of raising my fish.