There's nothing inherently wrong with the tank, but Planet Aquariums felt very "assembly-line" when dealing with them for a custom tank. Your experience with a custom tank from them will also probably vary depending on how good of a relationship your retailer has with Planet. In my case I assume they had as good of a relationship as any as I know they order a lot of tanks and even had their whole store re-modeled and showcased by Planet Aquarium just this last year. I was even able to order the tank without paying any delivery fees to the store. Their turn-around on responses was okay, my LFS was very prompt though.
The silicone work on the tank is a little sloppy like they weren't careful pulling the tape, trimming the excess, or smoothing the edges. They definitely used plenty of silicone on the tank with all of the seams protected and such but they still weren't very careful with filling the voids on the larger fills. It's never anywhere "structural" or anything, though.
The overflow is intended to fit with very tight tolerances underneath the euro brace, but their tolerances when drilling the tank were not quite as tight. I had to use a spare piece of acrylic to ensure there was enough of a gap created so that the removable overflow weir had
just enough room to to still come off. The drilled holes are slightly askew from each other so that this isn't possible if you just place the overflow bulkheads into the drilled holes, it makes it too angled to remove the teeth. The drilled holes also appear like when they are drilled from both sides simultaneously that the bits didn't quite line up and a "ridge" is created. It took a while to even get the overflow installed where removing the teeth was possible. I had also read iffy reviews on the tideline overflow being loud, but I was told to have them drill for a different overflow was like another $400.
The leveling mat they attached seems to only be glued/siliconed on in a few select spots which looks a little awkward if you intended to go barebottom as it shows through the bottom. Admittedly it will probably not be as noticeable once filled and definitely not when its covered in coralline.
The cut vinyl backing has some rough edges, and I'll have to be careful as there are some sections that seem very easy to start a peel/tear especially around the drilled edges.
You only get a 30 day warranty if the tank isn't placed on one of their stands. The pockethole-and-plywood-sheet stands look nice at a distance, but it's still just a bunch of plywood sheets.
A 180 gallon mega matrix with similar options as my tank is like $2450. You are charged 20% more than that outright for being "custom". They generally just said "no" to requests rather than offer an alternative, and I was trying to go trimless on the tank from the start. I was only able to get this eurobraced version after seeing it shown in a video off youtube and asking about it. They can do a PVC bottom but its $800 and isn't an insert, the entire bottom is then a PVC sheet. Their flat-polish glass is only available in the Mega Matrix dimensions. My tank is alledgedly rather unique in that it is 72" x 24" in full panes and not the 71.5" x 23.5" panes they use for the 180 mega matrix. I was told they had these panes left over from some other project, and was actually recommended to avoid having them cut and hand polish panes for more custom sizing as I guess it's not something they regularly do.
The same tank shipped from glass cages with a liftgate would have been essentially the same price but had any overflow I wanted and an actual PVC insert. It would have also had a longer warranty, and I could have avoided playing telephone with my LFS and just spoke to Glasscages directly. I basically started off wanting a slightly modified mega matrix, which really is a good deal I think, and it grew from there. In hindsight I should have just ordered a full custom from the start and hired some help to bring the tank inside. My LFS would only install if it was from Planet.
At the time of ordering I was a little wary of glasscages simply based on their reviews from couple years back before the change of ownership, but only ever heard great things about them. I did also end up hearing a very glowing review of GlassCages from a LFS that had toured their facility not too long ago. If you're going to buy at this price and have a toss up between Planet and GlassCages, I would go GlassCages.
Anyways it's a lot of nitpicking, but it does feel like I would have had the same tank exactly as I wanted it in the beginning from GlassCages within 24 hours after submitting the quote form through their site.
