Pump on Bricks

[Dutchman]

Hello Wild World!
This is a new form of communication to me so I hope that it reaches someone.
I have just finished building my first wildlife pond and want to install a pump. However, there is an inch of sludge at the bottom so it needs to be raised. Can I do this with ordinary building bricks or will they harm any flora/fauna? I understand that concrete/cement is a no no.

[Hedera]

If you give them a good scrub with plain rainwater and leave them to soak in a bucket of it for a day or twe they should be safe. Knock off any old mortar first of course.

[Kayleigh]

Hi and welcome to WAB..

To be honest I wouldn't put a pump in a wildlife pond, newts and frogs and god knows what else become trapped in them the best way to filter the water is through planting like yellow flag iris and lots of native oxygenating plants.

[Dutchman]

Thanks very much for the advice but I was not intending to use the pump for filtering. My pond is at the bottom of some steep sloping ground and I was planning to pump water up to a header pond from where it will cascade down through a couple of falls into a fairly deep bottom pool which will feed a short, slow moving stream that empties into the main pond via a shallow beach. In this way I was hoping to reduce any currents to a minimum. Is there no such thing as a frog/newt friendly pump?

[cat72uk]

would a cage made of mesh around the pump stop it harming wildlife?

[Lance Morgan]

Bricks providing they are clean should not be a problem. I use them in a small pond to put marginal plants on. You can buy pump 'covers' in different sizes and shapes made of plastic mesh in good garden shops/centres. This acts as a filter for sludge etc and prevent smaller invertibrates getting sucked into the pump.