The floating food bugaboo is one of my pet peeves. I've never had floating foods be an issue for any fish-- including a number of green terrors I've kept over the years. It's really more about the quality of food imo.
I've kept kapampa gibberosa nearly 14 years and other frontosa for years before that. I was a mod on what was once the premier English language frontosa forum, now defunct. Couldn't tell you how often I've seen people say things like: Don't feed floating foods. The air in floating pellets is bad. They can gulp air trying to eat at the surface. This is bad because they're deep water fish.
All rubbish, faulty logic. If this WAS true, it would be dicey any time you took them out of the tank-- to measure, photograph, strip eggs or fry, move them to another tank, or whatever else. Yet people do this all the time without a thought-- the same people worried about them gulping air if they eat a speck of food at the surface. Frontosa are a fish that will jump out of tanks. They're remarkably resilient in this respect, there are numerous stories of them jumping out, being discovered on the floor sometime later, sticky, almost dried out, and half dead, and reviving after being put back in the tank when the owner thought they were done for. It's happened to me also. The point being, how do they survive this is they can't gulp air? It's a myth.
As far as food, even when I feed sinking pellets, mine come up to the surface, heads out of the water, mouths open, trying to catch pellets before they even hit the water.
I've fed plenty of both floating and sinking foods, it's made zero difference, it's more about ingredients and quality (compare the ingredients in NLS and Tetra, Tetra will have cheaper ingredients-- personally, I'd go with the better quality food). With some fish it might make a difference where in the water they're more comfortable feeding. If there's a floating pellet out there that causes problems it's nothing I've ever used.
Some fish are finicky feeders when you first get them. Often this gets better as they get more comfortable in the tank, or get used to what you feed vs. what they were fed by a previous owner.
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