Spitting out flakes in the morning

[confused_aquarist]

So this is going to be another one in my continual series of newbie questions.
My fish are spitting out flakes (all of them), they've been doing it for months on end.
I feed my fish at morning and at night, and at first they have big appetite, but once done eating a few they would all start spitting.
This happens a lot more often in the morning, and some would even refuse to eat altogether. They eat a lot more at night.
I don't think this is due to overfeeding because when I feed them bbs after the flakes they would all start eating again and they eat as much as I feed.
These are killifish, they're omnivorous and would accept carnivore flakes, veggie flakes, algae just that they spit them out after eating some. Which forces me to feed bbs daily.
Females (all 14 of them) are always plump with eggs, the only alpha male at the moment (~9mo old) is neither skinny nor fat, just as average as a fish can get.
Are they considered somewhat anorexic? I'm wondering if this had to do with a protozoan breakout I had a few months back.
The fry, which are raised in another tank, never spit out any of the flakes, so it's very strange.

 

[MaloK]

You are spoiling them, The primary suspect is the quality of the flakes. Check for any signs of mold, discoloration, or musty odor.

Do you soak the fakes a little before giving them ?

If every time I spat my broccoli, mom would give me a chocolate bar. You know what I would do. Loll.

Try to skip a meal from time to time to see if it makes them start to appreciate it better.

 

[Magnum Man]

as @MaloK implied, it could be the texture of dry flakes, also perhaps they aren't conforming to the shapes of their bellies yet... fish will often rasp foods across the rough roof of their mouths ( their teeth ) when they spit out foods, to scrape off smaller particles of food...

I have just started feeding flake foods, they haven't been something I typically like to feed, and when I do feed them now, I crush them into micro flakes, and they are added with other types of foods

 

[GaryE]

Pharyngeal teeth... it's how they chew.

I have kept killies for 35 years, and no longer feed them flake. Some species - Fundulopanchax and Aplocheilus will eat flake, but most are like me in McDonalds - they have to be starving to eat that mulm.

My annulatus ate freshly hatched brine shrimp, other small live foods when I could get them, decapsulated brine shrimp cysts, krill fines, grasshopper powder, etc. They are insectivores, and like both roughage, and buglike food. That surface hugging behaviour?

It's bug hunting.

They're touchy little fish, neither the hardest nor the easiest to keep. But you aren't spoiling them if you stick to what they eat in nature.

I have Epiplatys huberi here - adults I caught and 2 generations following. None will eat flake unless I feed them after I've been away for a week. They'll go hungry rather than to eat even the best processed fishfoods.