This is just payback for all those great pictures and stories you post of your seahorses and eels ... I sooo want a seahorse tank right now. Especially when seeing the baby seahorses a guy on nano-reef has been trying to rear.
Let me preface all of my answers with: This pond was set up last November when we moved houses. We had a small 40 gallon pre-molded pond at the old house. We brought the fish and plants with us. We literally bought and setup the pond the week we moved, as I felt back for the fish (only 2 then) being stuck in a big rubbermaid container in the garage.
Our dogs have pretty much left the pond alone, and so have all the deer. Raccoons do come and mess with the plants (I need to re-pot some), but the pond is deep enough and has enough hiding places they haven't nabbed any of the fish yet <fingers crossed>.
There is no UV filter on it. I am using an old powerhead (I think the one that came in my aquapod 24!!) to to circulate water. Basically it is in one of those Bio-filter boxes you see at Home Depot/Lowes for ponds. It has bio-balls, and two filter pads in it. The output of the pump gets snaked out of the pond and into the back of the blue pot and overflows back to the pond. I probably could use a much stronger pump, but I don't want too much water turbulence. Water lilies like calm water.
To tell you the truth, I probably should rinse the filter pads out every month ... but I think I have done it once in the past six months
The pond is really low care. We feed the fish maybe once every couple of weeks ... they have algae and bugs to munch on. And with the semi-consistant rain we have been getting, I think I have "topped" off the pond once in the six months (I expect that to change as we push into the 90's).
Ok all of this talk is motivating me to clean up the pond this weekend (clean the filters, re-pot some plants, fertilize the plants, and remove dying lily leaves).