So is there any recipes that it is needed? what would the secondary do for it? When would I know to move it to the secondary? thanks a lot for the quick responses!
The only time I use a secondary is when I need to add something like fruit, or if I plan to reuse the yeast from primary and want to dry hop the first beer. This way I don't have to wash the yeast. If I'm not using the yeast again, I just dry hop in primary.
Is the carboy a 5 or 6 gallon? You can use the carboy for fermenting but if it's 5 gallon, your batch size will be reduced to about 4 gallons. With a 6 gallon carboy (like a better bottle ) you can get 5 gallons if you use fermcap-s antifoam or attach a blowoff tube.
edit: this post gave me my senior moment ( in a good way ).