Nick Tobler (born November 1996) is an American TikToker best known for raising eels and other fish in his house's cistern.

Biography

Tobler grew up in Erlanger, Kentucky. As a child, he was known to catch snakes, frogs, and toads, and bring them home. He enjoyed playing

Animal Crossing is a social simulation video game series developed and published by Nintendo. It was created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. The player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can ...

and

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of List of Pokémon video games, video games, Pokémon (TV series), animated series and List of Pokémon films, films, Pokémon Trading Card Game, a trading card game, and other related media. The fran ...

. Later, as a student, he worked for

PetSmart PetSmart Inc. is a privately held American chain of pet Big-box store, superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors ...

and a local pet store. He graduated from

Northern Kentucky University Northern Kentucky University is a public university in Highland Heights, Kentucky, United States. Established in 1968, it is the youngest of Kentucky's eight public universities. The university has seven constituent colleges in arts and science ...

in 2021, and has worked as an aquarium store manager. Tobler and his brother moved into a new house in Taylor Mill, which was built by Tobler's grandfather, in March 2022. Tobler has owned both scorpions and tarantulas in the past. In 2022, he owned a black widow, "fifteen tortoises, several lizards, and fish," including a lungfish. He and his brother breed Indian Star tortoises.

Online presence

Tobler had been posting videos about aquatic animals to YouTube since the early 2010s, when he was in 8th grade. He started a TikTok account in 2021. In March 2022, Tobler began posting on TikTok about his attempts to turn the cistern under his 1958 home's garage into an "eel pit". The 288-ft cistern had originally been used to collect rainwater, but had become obsolete when the house became connected to the city's water supply. A week after posting his first video on the project, his followers had jumped from 200 to more than 100,000. Tobler installed artificial lights, air pumps, and water filter into the cistern, and introduced goldfish, a catfish, and two crayfish into the water. He had 200,000 followers by May 2023. By mid-June 2023, when Tobler finally introduced eleven

American eel The American eel (''Anguilla rostrata'') is a facultative catadromous eel found on the eastern coast of North America. Anguillidae, Freshwater eels are fish belonging to the Elopomorpha, elopomorph superorder, a group of Phylogenetics, phylogen ...

s to the enclosure, he had gained more than 350,000 followers. The eels were given names taken from TikTok users' comments. Further additions to the eel pit have included

sturgeon Sturgeon (from Old English ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''str̥(Hx)yón''-) is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the ...

and

gar Gars are an ancient group of ray-finned fish in the family Lepisosteidae. They comprise seven living species of fish in two genera that inhabit fresh, brackish, and occasionally marine waters of eastern North America, Central America and Cuba ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tobler, Nick 1990s births Living people American TikTokers Northern Kentucky University alumni People from Kenton County, Kentucky YouTubers from Kentucky