To wrap this up. I had a wonderful time in the maldives. Lots of awesome dives. Aside from the liveaboard(would recommend them as well, Nautilus two, with the caveat that most customers will be german speakers), I spent my time on Maafushi.
To be honest, Maafushi has a limited selection of divesites, and doesn't have all the maldives has to offer(no hammerheads, no nurse sharks, few stingrays, and it was off-season for manta and whaleshark), but there's still a lot to see, I even had a once in a lifetime dive with 80+ dolphins(that I could count!) for 35+ minutes, just holding on to the reef in heavy current and watching them swim/dive/frollick around. Mind you these are spinner dolphins, not bottlenose, they're usually very shy. I was also lucky with a lot of other rare sights, such as an electric ray, sea hares(weird!), a slipper lobster, a suzanne's flatworm, a leaf fish, a fully grown stars & stripes pufferfish, multiple long octopus encounters(including a mimic once), and much more.
There's a lot of micro stuff to find in the reefs too, especially at night, one dive I counted 6 species of crab and 5 species of shrimp.
PS: I saw manta, whale sharks(snorkling only), nurse sharks, plenty of stingrays(at least 5-6 species*), etc, when I was on the liveaboard cruise, and a total of 6 species of shark* overall.
*I can name leopard ray, blackspotted stingray, whiptailed stingray, feathertail, and jenkins' whipray.
** white-tip reefshar, black-tip reefshark, grey reefshark, nurse shark, leopard shark and whaleshark.