DriftAqua started from love and frustration.
Love for beauty and the power that aquascaping has to bring beauty into our homes and reawaken our souls to our capacity to create.
Frustation that the majority of products marketed in the hobby have no scientific basis. That makes the hobby both confusing and unnecessarily expensive. That is why we end up with half-full bottles of products on our shelves!
Dr. Jonard 'Jon' Valdoz, Ph.D. Biochemistry, is a renowned multidisciplinary scientist with experience in plant biology, biomedical sciences, and tissue engineering across the Philippines, Japan, and the US. He is respected in his field with publications in the most exclusive journals worldwide including Nature and Biomaterials portfolios. Aside from his wide authorship, he reviews and critiques other scientists' works pending publication in top journals such as Nature Publishing Group and MDPI Publishing Group. At 29 years old, he left a leadership position at a San Francisco deeptech startup in 2024 to focus on healing and self-development. During that time, he rediscovered his love for plants—a passion rooted in his upbringing as a young farmer in the rural Philippines. He was frustrated at how the hobby is ruled by non-scientific claims and misleading products. He now merges his scientific expertise in tissue engineering with his hands-on farming background to develop innovative biotechnology products for the aquarium and ornamental plants hobby.
Click here to view Dr. Valdoz' scientific publications on Google Scholar
