Are They Fighting Or Mating?

[lee420]

I got a pair or blue rams two days ago and i came home from work today and fed them and started watching them. They faced eachother for a few seconds like a staredown then they got next to eachother facing opposite directions and started rubbing on eachother and gently nipping at eachother. Then they tapped mouths like they were kissing and repeated the same rubbing behavior again. Does anyone know if they were mating? Or just establishing dominance?

 

[techen]

My german blue rams, the largest one will try and bite into the side of my smaller one. But am pretty sure I have one male and one female. There not that hard to work out there sex.
 
If there not biting each other they just hang out.

 

[MBOU]

That will be establishing dominance, the mouth biting and lip locking is a common way for cichlids to do this

 

[lee420]

Does this mean they are opposite sex? Its hard to tell because one of their black spots isnt very distinct.

During this process one of them was flaring his fins out and the other did the opposite and seemed like its black spots faded away