I can see why you might not have liked the Tulamben area. It is excellent for muck-critter diving. The reefs are ok but yes there's much better elsewhere in Indo. When I dive Tulamben I'm mainly diving the muck sites shooting photos of critters.
Muck is okay.. In Komodo I got to see a flamboyant cuttle fish and other such stuff and loved to (pigmy sea horses are too darn small to get excited about). In Tulamben we saw a couple of fab painted frog fish. That said we saw more of the same in other areas of Indonesia as well as tons of other stuff which meant that from my perspective Tulamben still doesn't rate the effort when there are other better places nearby