How to get float value with SqlDataReader?

My guess is that Database is returning double value, try getting it as Double and convert it float (if required).

float time= (float) reader.GetDouble(0);

It's time for a little table, I think.

Note that GetFloat has the wrong name -- it should be GetSingle, because float is a C#-specific name. It makes no sense in VB.NET, for example.

So, if your database column is of type FLOAT, read it using GetDouble, not GetFloat. The data reader methods do not perform conversions; there is a generic GetValue method to get the value as an object that you can then convert further.

Incidentally, this is not the only subtlety -- the .NET floating-point types support denormalized values, whereas the T-SQL types do not, so it is possible to have floating-point numbers in your .NET code that can't be successfully stored in the database, even if the types match.

As you can read here a sql-server float maps to a .NET double, so you need to use GetDouble:

double totaltime = 0;  // necessary, double is wider than float
// ...

while (reader.Read())
{
    double time = reader.GetDouble(0);
    totaltime = totaltime + time;
    // conn.Close(); no, not in this loop, should be closed in the finally or via using-statement
}