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The temperature of my city has been very hot this week. the water temp rise very quickly and i've already turned off the basking light. but i still need to change the water with colder water everyday to keep the temperature under 78F (it can raise up to 84 or even 86F) . Can I just put ice in the tank to cool the water down?

Try using some empty pop bottles and filling them with water to freeze. After frozen you can toss them in and cool down the water.

Is your turtle still basking with the light being off? If s/he isn't, then you will need to turn it back on.

What size tank do you have?

i've the uvb light on and the uva (the heat light) off. not sure if it's still basking as today's my first day turning it off and i wasn't at home most of the time. i will turn it back on tomorrow. my tank is 10Gal and i have a 2 inches turtle. yes, i'll change to a larger tank after i move to my new place in fall.

I asked about tank size, because the bigger it is, the harder it is to cool. At least with 10 gallons, the water bottle shouldn't have any problem cooling it down.

It's been a scorcher in BC the last part of the week. I've got central AC, so it keeps the house temp down, therefore the water temp down, but when I do weekly partial water changes, I put in straight cold water (It comes out of the taps really cold) which gets it to 74-76, but by the end of the week it's back up to 78-80.
Is it really OK to put frozen pop/water bottles in there? I was thinking about doing that in Ralph's outside habitat, but I thought if he got to close for any length of time it would give him a brain freeze (or the turtle equivalent )

You crack me up! Should be safe. And, if the water is too warm, the bottle won't last long in there anyway.

Ok, good to know I'll give that a try next time

What kind of filter do you have?

I had this problem last year and I found the best thing to do if you have a canister filter like the XP3 is to just put the canister in a styrafom cooler and fill the cooler w/ ice or ice packs. So that way you don't have things floating in your tank and it cools the water as it enters the filter. It works great!!

I tried the ice bottle and it works well for me. ^_^ saves me lots of time from changing to cold water.
my filter is an internal filter Trio2000.

I sometimes use frozen bottles of water in larger tanks, since there is adequate room for them. In smaller tanks, I've used chilled water from the fridge and even ice cubes (I monitor the temp to make sure it's not dropping too far or fast).