Sorry for not getting in touch for a while. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. There is good and bad news about the house construction: The bad news first: My wife was never particularly enthusiastic about the idea of building a house. Key words are costs, duration, stress, and horror stories you hear from people you know. After the first meeting with an architect, the fears unfortunately turned out to be true. Construction costs and the building time in the greater Munich area have literally exploded in recent years. The architect estimates a construction period of at least 15-18 months. Which is definitely too long for us. Although I had become quite comfortable with the idea of building during the planning stage, building was always only a last resort because we couldn’t find an acceptable existing property and Munich’s prices are just crazy now. The good news: Just as we decided against building, we found a property that is (almost) perfect and that we will probably still buy today. Now I have to familiarize myself with renovating/refurbishing. Thanks again at this point to everyone who gave me designs/suggestions/tips in this thread! Planning was a lot of fun and I really learned a lot! Finished aquarium backgrounds do look very cool, but for me they have the following disadvantages: They have to be glued in firmly and are quite thick, causing you to lose a lot of depth in the aquarium. And the biggest disadvantage: you’re stuck with the design. Major redecorating/restructuring is then no longer possible. This may not be such a problem with Malawi rock tanks, but with Amazon tanks where you like to swap a root now and then, it definitely is. Best regards Alro