First time in Stainless: few questions???

[Kayeness]

Purchased an Anvil 6.5 gallon stainless steel fermentor a few months back.
Used this quarantine time to brew an American Pale Wheat.
Already know how most around here feel about moving to a secondary.
Questions:
1. For clarity sake I always visually could see when to move to next step when fermentation stopped. Whats the rule of thumb when using stainless if there is one? (Gravity ready)
2. Fermenter did not come with a temp strip. Is one necessary? And maybe a sillier question, if so, which one would you recommend?
3. I have a 5 gallon batch going; would like to move 1 gallon to a 1 gallon carboy for a small batch infusion....need some ideas.

 

[Kayeness]

Scratch question#2
Looked in box. Temp strip did come. Marked for ales and Lagers.

 

[Franktalk]

Use a wine thief or a long pipette and quickly take a sample to check the progress of the ferment. Take your gallon from the ball valve. If you're worried about oxygen ingress, you can rig something up to inject about 1 psi of CO2 into the airlock hole to replace the beer as you draw it off from the bottom.

 

[THESULLI]

I like clear fermenters so I can see all of the action but I love the ease of use when it comes to the buckets. General consensus seems to be to take gravity reading a couple of days apart. If they are the same, she is done cooking.

I will answer a question with a question mainly because I am also curious. What would be wrong with transferring 1 gallon to another vessel using an sanitized auto siphon? It would be identical to transferring to a secondary but your only moving 1 gallon and bottling or legging the other 4?

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

I always use a yeast starter so my yeast is ready to go, but I just leave it in my anvil for two weeks and then rack to the keg, no secondary. For lagers I might let it ride 2.5-3 weeks before kegging, just monitor bubble activity and if you can raise the temp up the second week, I usually finish beers about 10-15 degrees above the pitching temp.