Viral: TikTok star builds eel pit underneath his house

KENTUCKY: A pet store manager from Kentucky, US, has converted the basement of his house into an eel pit.

Nick Tobler, known to his social media followers as CowTurtle, said he was inspired to create the eel habitat when he and his brother moved into their grandmother’s old house in Taylor Mill.

Nick Tobler said he inspected the home’s underground rain cistern, which was designed to store rainwater for conversion into fresh drinking water. He then decided to stock this ‘underground cave’ with some of the slippery creatures.

Tobler started sharing his journey on his TikTik account, @CowTurtle, which spiked to hundreds of thousands of followers. In the clips, he is often seen filling the cistern with water, eels and goldfish.

“The very first video I posted was a week before we moved into this house, I see the manhole corner in the corner of my garage, I was like, ‘Oh cool, my house comes with a future eel pond,'” Tobler told an international magazine.

Tobler said he currently has 11 or 12 American eels in the underground pond, in addition to a few dozen other pets inside the house, including tarantulas, a caiman and an Australian lungfish.

While he often shows videos of his other pets, his eel videos are by far the most popular on TikTok. The internet has fallen in love with Nick and the eels, with people even naming them.

‘Crunch Wrap Supreme’ is the name of the biggest, while the smallest is called ‘lil bathtub.’