i had similar experience. heat is a real problem here in asia. not wanting to spend so much to buy chiller, i tried the fans (many of them), the ice thing.
from my experience, tho little, fans help a little (it brought down 5 degrees F the most no matter how many more fans i used) which didn't help much when temp here in summer can spike up to 95F and beyond. also i had to keep an eye on it becuz on chilly days it brought the temp down a bit too low.
the ice thing worked but it required a long period of time to slowly bringing the temp down while adding a large trunk of ice at once will bring down the temp way too quick and thus even worse for coral.
with the above technique although i successfully kept temp under 86 most of the time but the temp swing was too big and hard to monitor and maintain and i watched my elegance coral slowly bleached to almost transparent. then i made up my mind and bought a chiller.
O man, it really makes a difference!!!
once temp stablized, my elegance started to turn better and gradually return the color. it makes the expensive chiller really worth it, IMO.
btw, from the incidence, i noticed some corals have better tolerance than others, eg. my torch coral didn't feel a thing whatsoever before and after... haha... so it depends i guess
good luck