The law was enacted, from what I gather, as a knee jerk reaction to salmonella scares in younger children. Red-eared sliders are ridiculously cheap in the wholesale market because they are so easy to breed and can have such large clutches of babies - so they are readily available, cheap to obtain, and to many people, a disposable pet. At one point they were given away as prizes at county fairs and so forth. Now, the market has shifted a bit... and many are shipped to the overseas food market instead of into the pet trade.
I would say the main reason he isn't growing is because of lack of UV lighting. Without it, no matter what you feed him, he's not going to be able to properly synthesize calcium and at the very least end up with deformed and stunted bones and shell... at worst, and more likely, die. So even if you give her a tank, there are still other steps she needs to take if she wants him to survive, much less thrive. Aquatic turtles are not a cheap investment, they take a lot of care and a relatively expensive setup - which only gets more expensive the larger they get.
I would say the main reason he isn't growing is because of lack of UV lighting. Without it, no matter what you feed him, he's not going to be able to properly synthesize calcium and at the very least end up with deformed and stunted bones and shell... at worst, and more likely, die. So even if you give her a tank, there are still other steps she needs to take if she wants him to survive, much less thrive. Aquatic turtles are not a cheap investment, they take a lot of care and a relatively expensive setup - which only gets more expensive the larger they get.
